{"id":1112,"date":"2020-08-17T08:15:23","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T08:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2020-08-17T08:18:17","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T08:18:17","slug":"science-and-political-uncertainty-from-auguste-comte-to-dominic-cummings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1112","title":{"rendered":"Science and Political Uncertainty from Auguste Comte to Dominic Cummings"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr Paul-Fran\u00e7ois Tremlett<\/em><\/p>\n

Isidore Auguste Marie Fran\u00e7ois Xavier Comte (1798-1857) was writing in the aftermath of the French Revolution. To him it seemed that a new, rational, and modern, industrial-scientific order was emergent. The old, feudal formation of aristocracy, Church, and monarchy, with its arbitrary privileges, had been eclipsed in the violent energies of the revolution of 1789. Comte saw an opportunity to bring an end to the uncertainties of the times by establishing a new society on rational-secular principles that would be led by scientists, artists and industrialists. Comte described post-revolutionary France as a \u201csocial system which is dying\u201d but it was simultaneously one that contained the seeds of a \u201cnew system whose time has come and which is in the process of taking definitive shape\u201d (Comte 1998, p. 49).<\/p>\n

Comte believed that a new science was needed to reorganize society by raising \u201cpolitics to the rank of the sciences of observation<\/em>\u201d (1998, p. 81). Initially he called the new science \u201csocial physics\u201d (Comte 1998, p. 158), and he drew methodological inspiration for it from physiology. Comte was so convinced of the new direction post-revolutionary French society needed to take he invented a new religion \u2013 a Church of Positivism \u2013 to embed the new values into the culture. For Comte, the uncertainties of the post-revolutionary period could only decisively be resolved by the elevation of a new elite to the reins of power armed with the new scientific methods and values he had pioneered, for the solution of political problems.<\/p>\n

It is no secret that the agenda of the current government includes a radical overhaul of Whitehall (for example, see Abby Innes\u2019 blog post analysing Michael Gove\u2019s recent Ditchley Annual Lecture on civil service reform: https:\/\/blogs.lse.ac.uk\/politicsandpolicy\/gove-ditchley-lecture\/<\/a>). At the heart of this agenda stands the figure of Dominic Cummings and his blog. Cummings\u2019 blog juxtaposes breathless discussion of some domains of contemporary scientific research with political questions. The post \u2018On the referendum #33\u2019 interests me because of the distinction it establishes between on the one hand \u201cstories\u201d and \u201cauthority\u201d, and on the other, \u201cevidence\/experiment\u201d and \u201cquantitative models\u201d. Cummings links \u201cstories\u201d to myth (\u201cIcarus\u201d) and authority to irrationality (\u201cwitch doctor\u201d) while \u201cevidence\/experiment\u201d and \u201cquantitative models\u201d are linked to \u201cphysics, wind tunnels\u201d and the \u201cdesign of modern aircraft\u201d. Later, as part of a discussion of Bret Victor\u2019s work, this becomes a contrast between \u201cwords and stories\u201d and \u201cinteractive models\u201d. Words, according to Cummings, are unreliable: \u201ceven the most\u00a0modern writing tools\u201d he claims,\u00a0\u201care designed around typing in\u00a0words<\/em>, not\u00a0facts<\/em>. These tools are suitable for promoting preconceived ideas, but provide no help in ensuring that words reflect reality, or any plausible model of reality\u201d. Models are better than stories because their \u201cassumptions<\/em>\u00a0are clearly visible\u201d. Cummings asks the reader to imagine a new kind of writing tool \u201cdesigned for\u00a0arguing from evidence<\/em>\u201d:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean merely juxtaposing a document and reference material, but literally \u2018autocompleting\u2019 sourced facts directly into the document. Perhaps the tool would have built-in connections to fact databases and model repositories, not unlike the built-in spelling dictionary. What if it were as easy to insert facts, data, and models as it is to insert emoji and cat photos?<\/p>\n

In common with Comte, Cummings assumes that a new kind of government is required which, once armed with the requisite new writing tools and skills in data analysis and modelling, can completely re-frame the political as a field of decision-making practices. This new kind of government will be data-savvy and will make extensive use of new technologies. But facts change: at the heart of science is not the establishment of facts which are then fixed and true for all time, but a tentative and reflexive process of research and debate. Science may promise the certainty of facts, data and models but it is a certainty that never arrives and which is forever deferred, such that all we are always left with is interpretation (Derrida 1997).<\/p>\n

Comte and Cummings are of course not the only utopian revolutionaries to have asked, \u201cwhat is to be done?\u201d but what other such figures may more clearly have recognised – or just been more up-front about – is the connection between brute power and political change. Comte invented a religion, a social science and coined the terms altruism, sociology and positivism, but his work is rarely read or acknowledged today. It remains to be seen what Dominic Cummings leaves us with.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References:<\/h4>\n

Comte, A. 1998. Early Political Writings<\/em>, edited and translated by H. S. Jones. Cambridge:\u00a0Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n

Cummings, D. 2019. \u2018On the referendum #33: High performance government, \u2018cognitive\u00a0technologies\u2019, Michael Nielsen, Bret Victor, & \u2018Seeing\u00a0Rooms\u2019\u2019.\u00a0https:\/\/dominiccummings.com\/2019\/06\/26\/on-the-referendum-33-high-performance-government-cognitive-technologies-michael-nielsen-bret-victor-seeing-rooms\/\u00a0<\/a>. Accessed 12\/08\/2020.<\/p>\n

Derrida, J. 1997. Of Grammatology<\/em>, translated by G. C. Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins\u00a0University Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr Paul-Fran\u00e7ois Tremlett Isidore Auguste Marie Fran\u00e7ois Xavier Comte (1798-1857) was writing in the aftermath of the French Revolution. To him it seemed that a new, rational, and modern, industrial-scientific order was emergent. The old, feudal formation of aristocracy, Church, and monarchy, with its arbitrary privileges, had been eclipsed in the violent energies of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[418,419,421,12,420],"class_list":["post-1112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ideas","category-news-and-media","tag-comte","tag-cummings","tag-facts","tag-politics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1116,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions\/1116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}