Science and Politics (Kelsey Hunter, Week 14 Reaction)

I was a little disappointed our discussion didn't go further today in class, but I too like everyone was tired and worn out at the time. Also at the time I didn't really have an answer to whether science and politics should be kept separate. My answer is that they must interact, but I'm not sure if they can be practiced simultaneously by the same individual.

Let's say we see science as the way the world is- explanations for the world as it is- and politics as the way the world should be- actions taken to make the world change to fit personal beliefs. When I explain these concepts to myself in this way it seems obvious. A politician must take science into account before acting. Judgments about the way the world should be have to come from somewhere. In the most likely scenario (or at least I would hope) that the way someone decides how they think the world should be is based at least partly off the way the world is now. Also, that person must understand the scientific explanation- how and why the world is the way it is- in order to judge whether the world ought to be different or remain the same in the future. So maybe the scientist and politician are not the same person, but they at least must understand each other.

I think Halliday wanted us to understand this point. He described the tension between theory and politics (or science and politics), but he said that theory and policy making should go together. I learned in my Environmental Science class though that scientists and politicians speak different languages and often have a hard time of understanding each other. This is something that must be overcome, no matter what type of "science" we might talk about. This is also the reason I don't think the scientist and the politician can be the same person. Politics is about practical applications and sometimes science is too abstract or narrowly focused to apply to everyday situations.