Science, politics and science policy in Canada

In this essay, the author undertakes a critical review of Canadian science policy. This provides a framework in which to assess the current state of affairs of “science and politics in Canada.” It is shown in what way notions of state-administered science policy, as well as market-driven exchange, are problematic. Special attention is given to the emergence of the concept of innovation, first appearing in the Science Council of Canada’s 1968 Report #4, but now appearing uncritically throughout government documents on science and public policy. The core thesis of the essay, arising out of an analysis of the “essential tension” between the autonomy of science and the authority of politics, is that both the meaning of scientific practice and its relevance for public policy must be shaped by an ongoing critical discussion within civil society a discussion that must not be dominated by either the state or markets.

Dans cet article, l’auteur entreprend un examen critique de la politique des sciences au Canada. Ceci fournit un cadre pour evaluer la situation actuelle ” de la science et des politiques au Canada “. On demontre de quelle facon les notions de politique des sciences administree par l’Etat ainsi que d’echange axe sur le marche sont problematiques. On s’arrete specialement a l’emergence du concept d’innovation qui est apparu pour la premiere fois dans le rapport no 4 du Conseil des sciences du Canada en 1968 mais apparait maintenant sans etre conteste un peu partout dans les documents gouvernementaux sur la science et la politique publique. La these qui sous-tend cet article provient d’une analyse de la ” tension essentielle ” entre l’autonomie de la science et l’autorite des politiques et avance que la definition de la pratique scientifique et sa pertinence en matiere de politique publique doivent etre modelees a l’aide d’une discussion critique continue au sein d’une societe civile – une discussion qui ne doit pas etre dominee par l’Etat ou les marches.

It is often said that we live in an age of science, or that ours is a scientific culture. It is rarely clear just what this means. On the one hand, it implies that our culture is a descendent of the enlightenment – that we value reason highly, perhaps above all else; on the other hand, it implies that our culture is rooted in technology and a version of pragmatic rationality which puts utility above all else. As is often the case when views are separated so sharply, neither holds up to scrutiny. This polarization between the idealized view of scientific culture as one with a profound respect for reason and the pragmatic view of scientific culture as one with a vulgar respect for utility is by no means trivial. Nor is it merely an exercise in philosophical abstraction to identify the rift. For it is a rift that informs many of our day-to-day discourses about science, and, more importantly, one which shapes affairs at the level of policy. In this essay I shall be concerned mostly with the latter.

What I would like to do here is motivate a theoretical discussion about science and politics in Canada by locating some of the relevant issues within the philosophical polarity I have just identified. The approach is generally historical insofar as I begin by sketching the development of science funding institutions in Canada; however, the themes are critical and philosophical. I hope to identify and clarify central ideas that have informed discussions in Canada about science and its place within the public policy process and within government and industrial decision-making institutions. The three themes which I highlight are (1) the concept of science policy, (2) our understanding of the relationship of science to public policy, and (3) the emerging notion of innovation as a rhetorical centrepiece of current public debates about science. Although the essays being published in this special issue of the Journal of Canadian Studies were not officially selected for nor organized around these themes, I believe that the historico- philosophical framework I sketch here provides some insight into the context in which the essays were conceived and written by their authors.

The Rise and Fall of Science Policy

It is difficult to say just when the notion of “science policy” became a part of public deliberations about science and technology, but certainly by the 1960s it was part of our discourse.1 At that time a variety of institutions and agencies with a mandate to address aspects of science policy were emerging. The Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex in the UK is particularly noteworthy.2 As we move into the twenty-first century, however, the notion of science policy is no longer in currency, and possibly for good reason.3 The expression “science policy” seems to imply a level of formality which is today quite out of vogue and is viewed with suspicion by many parties in the current debates.

I shall give a thumbnail account of the history of science policy in Canada. Indeed, my account is a second-order thumbnail, being a critical summary of the summary offered by John de la Mothe and Gilles Paquet. I want to provide a broad outline of the formal context of science in government, but I also want to trace the rise and fall of the notion of science policy. Implicitly, I am encouraging caution about the use of the expression “science policy,” arguing in effect that its meaning must remain informal – that we should resist the temptation to make science policy a formal aspect of public policy.4

A more extended account of the history of science policy, at least up until the late 1960s, can be found in Bruce Doern’s work (Science and Politics; “Scientists”). The earliest history of science in Canada is normally considered to be represented by such institutions as the Geological Survey. It is usually emphasized that neither the resources to build scientific institutions nor the political or cultural will were present in the early period of Canada’s history; however, insofar as there was a significant need to map the country and to catalogue and understand its natural resource base, the systematic work of the Geological Survey was considered a proper and appropriate place to invest the nation’s effort. Unlike Europe in the nineteenth century, Canada did not have a robust cultural network of scientific practitioners, although some of its educational institutions were becoming established.5 From the point of view of its formal institutions, science in Canada started to become systematically organized only in 1917. As de la Mothe and Paquet point out, the incentive to establish formal policies regarding Canadian science arose out of the government’s increasing attempts during the First World War to apply science to the war effort.

This kind of pressure was also influential in England, where, following the recommendations of the Haldane report to Parliament in 1916, new incentives were being put in place to reform government science. The general philosophy of the Haldane report was influential in Canada in 1917 when the National Research Council was created.6 Thus the NRC was conceived in a political climate which acknowledged a certain ideal of scientific practice, holding that the best scientific results are achieved when the community of scientists is left to its own discretion to allocate its resources internally in such as way as to optimize its production of knowledge (the Haldane principle).

The NRC itself had only an advisory role according to its original mandate, but that advisory role was oriented towards a growing perception that Canadian science needed to be coordinated.7 Thus the NRC, in effect, was the first official science policy institution. In the 1930s, the NRC was to take on its own autonomous research projects and to acquire control over the distribution of government grants to academic research projects. As de la Mothe and Paquet point out, the inherent conflicts of interest in this model were problematic. Far more interesting, however, is the fundamental tension between the Haldane principle (the principle of scientific autonomy), which was widely recognized as a characteristic of good scientific organization and practice, and the notion of giving the NRC a mandate to coordinate Canadian science by functioning as an advisory body to the Privy Council.

Despite these intrinsic political tensions, the NRC continued to be constituted this way until the 1960s. No doubt a detailed history would reveal ways in which the tension between scientific autonomy and government coordination played out, but the tension gave rise to political transformation only well after the Second World War. Once again, it is almost certain that the appropriation of science to the war effort was a factor (de la Mothe and Paquet report major increases in the funding of the NRC). More significant still was the post-war emphasis on economic growth and the need to redesign universities to accommodate the returning soldiers. As is well known, these transformations of the university came to a peak only in the 1960s with the rapid and massive expansion of the system in Western countries. In this climate, while philosophies of scientific and academic autonomy continued to thrive within the new scientific and educational institutions, the sheer size of the investment seemed to call for renewed efforts to coordinate Canadian science.

It is therefore not surprising that by 1964 the Science Secretariat to the Privy Council had been established, reconnecting science once again to the corridors of power in a significant way. In 1966, according to the original plan, the Science Secretariat was transformed into the Science Council, an institution with a mandate to advise on science policy. This is arguably the zenith of the science policy movement, a point in time when, under the influential leadership of Omond Solandt, the Science Council seemed to enjoy access to the centre of political power (de la Mothe, “Dollar Short” 881). As long as resources continued to flow freely into science, this might not have aggravated the tension between the autonomy of science and the goal of administrative or political coordination. The creation of the Science Council and other such bodies/ however, preceded by only a short time the waves of economic and environmental crises which began in the 1970s, and these led to dramatic changes. For a variety of reasons, the oil crisis and the emerging environmental movement, as well as the early stages of economic globalization, would eventually redefine our understanding of the strategic relevance of science, and therefore would ultimately redefine our philosophical attitudes towards science in a policy context. Science was to become strategic (I refer to this below as the strategic turn in science policy). Defenders of the traditional view of science, the view captured by the Haldane principle, could be expected to react to this development, thus exacerbating the tension between political authority and scientific autonomy.

In the mid-1970s, the breaking up of the mandates of the NRC was completed with the creation of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERCC), an institution that officially took over the role of granting agent for research in Canadian universities. The triple mandate of the NRC, as it had eventually emerged, to coordinate the Canadian government’s scientific research and policy, to fund Canadian academic scientific research, and to conduct research of its own, had now been dismantled into three independent institutions: respectively, the Science Council, NSERCC, and what remained of the NRC. The perceived failure of the NRC in the period from 1917 to 1962 to achieve its original mandate of coordinating Canadian government science is explained by de la Mothe and Paquet as a result of the conflict of interest which eventually arose as the NRC took upon itself this triple mantle. With the role of national science policy advisor now placed in one institution, the Science Council, one might have expected greater success. The notion of failure is somewhat ironic, however, because the view that the NRC had failed arises out of the growing emphasis on coordination as a form of centralized management of science, at least science as practised within government and the university system. Viewed in its own terms, as an element of the original promotion of excellence within a regime of scientific autonomy, the NRC had fulfilled its role perfectly well.

The Science Council undertook a variety of projects, diversifying considerably in its later years. Originally, its focus reflected its mandate as a science policy advisory body, and in 1968 the Science Council published its Report No. 4: Towards a National Science Policy for Canada. By virtue of this report it can be said that the Science Council represents the high point of Canada’s quest for a formal science policy, as I explain below. It was ultimately unsuccessful, but it did set the stage for the later Senate Committee Report, A Science Policy for Canada (hereafter the “Lamontagne Report”). The Lamontagne Report is the culmination of the ambition of policy makers to coordinate Canadian government science, not in the sense that it provided at long last the definitive framework for Canadian science policy – because it did not – but rather, in the sense that it formalized a proposal for a grand framework of science policy. As de la Mothe and Paquet argue, this was to be its fatal flaw since such a move flew in the face of the entrenched norms of the scientific community.

Towards a National Science Policy for Canada

The Science Council Report No. 4 was quite unequivocal about its call for a “total systems approach,” an expression used repeatedly to characterize the kind of “major programs” for which the report called. Two passages from Report No. 4 are quite revealing, and occur in successive paragraphs of Section 6, “The Concept of Major Programs”:

Nowadays, with the gathering of people into urban concentrations, with the high degree of interdependence created by technology and the increasing demands for efficiency in transportation, communications, energy supply, manufacturing, distribution of food and goods, waste disposal, etc., society has closed in upon itself. One man’s effluent is another man’s intake. It has become clear that there is a public interest which is not always coincident with or optimized by the pursuit of private interests. The problems which stand in the way of realizing the optimum conditions for life in contemporary society, as a society, will not necessarily be solved in an optimum way, or may not even be soluble at all by private or piecemeal approaches. A total “systems approach” may be essential. (30)

This approach is defended in the next paragraph:

Frequent references are made in many sections of this report to the need for “a systems approach.” The Science Council considers such an approach to involve the systematic and rational analysis and design of an object or policy, in which every possible effort is made to ensure consideration of all reasonable alternatives and in which attempts are made to provide objective quantitative measures of the consequences of alternate courses of action as a basis for decision. It is in effect an optimization technique. (30)

These are heady passages. Several aspects stand out and bear emphasizing: first, the clear and definitive assertion that the private sector cannot achieve all of society’s goals is significant in view of the subsequent turn towards privatization. It is hard to imagine a comparable government document making such a general assertion today. While it is still true that government position papers continue to address issues about the scope and limits of privatization, especially in the context of health-care policy, such discussions are immediately embedded within the wider context of aggressive attempts to promote the role of the private sector. It is not possible to predict at this time how far down the road towards privatization and market-based policies we shall go, but it is important to keep in mind that in 1968 the Science Council could make this kind of general statement, and that it was in fact a key element which animated their vision, one linking science policy and the public good in direct ways.

Second, the concept of a total system is itself highly significant, especially in light of its parallel emphasis on optimization. Indeed, it is fair to say that concepts of systems- based optimization were coming very much into vogue. They were an offshoot of the post-Second World War flirtation with operational research, general systems theory, and the early (pre-cyberspace) enthusiasm for cybernetic control theory. This interest in systems survived well beyond the period of the Science Council report, strongly influencing such things as safety management in industry and radiation protection regulations in Canada and elsewhere.9 Systems engineering approaches were enthusiastically welcomed by the private sector, at least in some quarters, and were by no means linked in an essential way, as might be inferred from the Science Council passages, to the limitations of private sector activities. The principal point, however, is that the Science Council’s emphasis on total systems methods represents a focussing of the centralizing tendencies of “science coordination institutions” recognized by de la Mothe and Paquet. The total systems which were being contemplated were precisely the kind of philosophical vision that scientists could be expected to resist, notwithstanding the fact that cybernetic control systems, the core of the new management metaphor, were in effect their own creation. This is more than a curious irony. It is paradigmatic of the essential tensions that characterize the relationship between science and politics.

Third, the significance of the notions of rationality and quantification in Report No. 4 cannot be underestimated. Although these terms remain undefined by the Science Council text, it is clear that the notion of rationality being invoked is strongly connected to the cybernetic control systems being imagined. The insistence upon quantification clearly indicates a lingering positivism in the notion of rationality being defended. The implication is that the desired optimization of these systems, even though they are to be directed at aspects of the public good and managed by government, is essentially computational.10 This residual positivism finds its trace in the institutions of science as well as the institutions of policy, serving to unify a core set of normative assumptions,” and thus creating the context for irreconcilable political difference. Thus, those who believe that science can be isolated as an analytical process which produces information in a value-neutral way find themselves irreconcilably in conflict with those who understand science as an essentially critical process whose products are grounded in clearly identifiable norms. Practising scientists who hold the view that science is valueneutral are especially troubled as they find themselves being drawn into debates about science wi h external, political agents, over issues they have always considered the internal prerogative of science itself.

The Science Council’s Report No. 4 introduces a framework containing four elements meant to characterize the overall pattern of organized scientific activity. The first three elements are now a standard part of our discourses about science and technology: (1) basic or fundamental research, (2) applied research, (3) development, and (4) innovation. Since the first three have their now-standard definition, I shall elaborate only the fourth. Innovation is defined as the “practical implementation of the results of research and development to provide new and improved goods or services.” The definition is not very explicit, but goes on to point out that innovation is typically very capital-intensive, and that the decision to go forward requires a careful consideration of economic gain and social benefit. Insofar as the latter can be understood as a form of cost-benefit calculation, innovation is being characterized as the overall introduction of infrastructures to enable the dissemination of the results of science within the economy and society. I consider this to be extremely important because, despite its vague formulation, this notion of innovation is reasonably coherent, is linked to notions of social benefit, and can be construed as an extension of the standard basic/applied/ development framework. The notion of innovation, however, is today the dominant rhetorical element in science and technology policy discourses, despite the disappearance in those discourses of any coherence or central meaning whatsoever. Two recent documents produced by the Government of Canada illustrate my point: Science and Technology for the New Century and Canada’s Innovation Strategy. In the second of these documents, we are asked,

What does innovation mean? It means coming up with new ideas about how to do things better and faster. It is about making a product or offering a service which no one had thought of before. It is about putting new ideas to work in our businesses and industries and having a skilled work force that can use those new ideas. And it is about aggressively pursuing new markets for Canada’s products and services.

So innovation means speed, originality, application, skills, novelty and selling. Later we learn that an innovation environment is created by “modernizing our business and regulatory policies to support and recognize investment and innovation excellence,” and that society is strengthened by “supporting innovation at the local level so that [our communities] continue to be magnets for investment and opportunity.” While there is a need for a careful critical analysis of these passages (and others throughout the emerging literature on science and technology), it seems pretty clear that innovation can be just about anything you want it to be – anything, that is, except critical, reflective or deliberative.

A Science Policy for Canada

The Lamontagne Report, A Science Policy for Canada, was published four years after the Science Council’s Report No. 4. It establishes in many ways the high point of the science policy movement in Canada. In instrumental terms it was quite successful, bringing about a major restructuring of the central institutions which regulate science and science funding in Canada. Indeed, it is the Lamontagne Report which recommended the creation of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to take over the NRC’s role as a funder of academic research.12 In other ways, however, the report was to be ill-fated, coming as it did at a turning point in the history of Canadian political culture in general. I have already mentioned three principle developments that would change the tone of science policy debates, eventually having the effect of muting discussions of science policy as such: economic crises such as the oil crisis of the early seventies; the influence of the environmental movement; and the emergence of the neo-liberal promotion of markets. Other factors could no doubt be added, such as the growing number of science-based programs within government and the increasingly complex nature of the institutional culture within which government science is practised. Although the energy crisis was relatively short-lived, and its direct influence on science policy unclear it is quite clear that it will return in the foreseeable future, making huge demands on science to serve our strategic needs – indeed, to be innovative with respect to the development of alternative technological regimes.” The impact of the environmental movement was arguably more significant, but at the same time more diffuse. On the one hand, the discourses of environmentalism have played a role in redefining our understanding of the strategic importance of science, as environmental advocates appropriate more and more the language of science within their interventions. On the other hand, the emergence of environmental science itself, along with other interdisciplinary formations, has disrupted assumptions within the scientific community about what constitutes good scientific practice.

The sketch of the history of science policy which I have offered, following in broad outline the account first given by Doern with critical additions by de la Mothe and Paquet, brings to our attention the grand tension that has existed in Canada between the autonomy of science and authority of politics. I shall return below to de la Mothe and Paquet’s explanation of the failure of the Lamontagne Report; although I argue below that their account is essentially correct, de la Mothe and Paquet seem to rebuke scientists unfairly for their resistence. The tension between science and politics is irreducible, or, borrowing an expression from Thomas Kuhn’s discussion of divergence and convergence in science, it is an “essential tension” (Essential Tension).14 In this essay I have been reflecting on the emergence of the strategic turn in science policy and science funding. Cognate to this is the emergence of mandated and sponsored science, the appropriation of scientific practice into the strategic projects of governments and corporations.15 This “politicization” of science can be seen as another source of divergence (understood as diversification) of scientific practice, and therefore not necessarily a bad thing; however it deflects attention away from the more fundamental questions which scientists would ask when left to their own resources within the scientific community as the Haldane principle promoted. This is not a problem in the sense that it calls for a solution. The political tension I am describing is a productive one. Its irreducibility is practical, in the sense that finite resources imply that we cannot address all problems at once. In this sense, the strategic turn is unavoidable since resources must be allocated on some reasoned basis. But the tension is also logical. This is not the place to develop such a claim in detail, but it seems relevant to emphasize that contemporary theories of science (post-empiricist philosophy of science, sociology of science, cultural and anthropological theories of science, not to mention post- structuralist and post-modern theory in general) have increasingly demonstrated the implausibility of understanding the meaning of scientific practices from within the conceptual framework and resources of the practices themselves.

Although the Lamontagne Report appeared only four years after the Science Council’s Report No. 4, it had become problematic in its approach to science, technology and innovation.16 While, like Report No. 4, it is relatively clear about what it means by “innovation” (but no longer simply the fourth stage of a process), it was already becoming evident that the simple linear model of development did not sit well with the increasingly complex relationships which were beginning to emerge between scientific, political and commercial institutions. Lamontagne could not be expected to anticipate the full impact of the growth of markets, the increase in science-based programs within government, nor the commercialization of science (e.g., risk assessment), but these factors were soon to overtake Lamontagne’s report.

Beyond a National Science Policy for Canada

Although it is unclear in detail just how the Haldane principle had influenced the vision of the NRC in its original conception, the philosophical themes of scientific autonomy, internal allocation of resources, and competition for individual excellence through vigorous peer review were key elements taken seriously by scientists and politicians alike. This set of philosophical values continues to this day to be central and critical within the community of practising scientists contributing to their self-image, whether or not their practices consistently live up to it. De la Mothe and Paquet refer to the community of scientists as the “Republic of Science”17 and argue that the Lamontagne Report ultimately failed because it met with formidable resistance from that Republic. They lay the blame for the failure, essentially, on three interrelated factors: (1) scientists’ resistance to any attempt at central coordination on the scale of the Lamontagne recommendations, coupled with the moral authority scientists still wielded in this respect;18 (2) the overextended ambition of the report itself – what they called a “politics of grandeur”; and (3) structural problems in the Canadian socio-economic framework. My own analysis agrees with this judgement. I have emphasized the productive tension between science and politics, however, rather than seeing the conflict simply as a battle of wills, and I have tried to establish how the “grandeur” of the Science Council’s and Lamontagne’s approaches were a natural consequence of the philosophical mood of the time, a mood which was already being overtaken by political and commercial developments.

By 1996, when the Canadian federal government published yet another attempt to establish a national science policy, responsibility for such things as science and technology had already been transferred to Industry Canada. It was Industry Canada that developed and issued Science and Technology for the New Century (followed more recently by Canada’s Innovation Strategy, discussed briefly above), a doctrinaire cobbling together of market-oriented slogans, valorizing industrial innovation above all else. Indeed, the notion of innovation, already inserted into science policy discourses in Canada by the Science Council’s Report No. 4,19 had by 1996 become the centre of concern, the very raison d’etre of science policy. The introductory lines of Science and Technology for the New Century read,

The Government of Canada is committed to achieving economic growth through innovation. To do so, it must work with other sectors of the economy and other institutions to build a knowledge-based society that will enhance Canada’s national system of innovation.

This sounds, on the surface, reasonable enough. As I have been arguing, however, the core meaning of “innovation” is lost. Indeed, the reference to “Canada’s system of innovation” seems to lack a referent altogether, unless it somehow refers to the structures and processes which would be brought into existence as a consequence of the policies being described. To illustrate my contention, I shall briefly list and comment on seven elements which are offered in Science and Technology for the New Century. In doing so, I have attempted (i) to acknowledge the virtues of these principles, as far as they go; (ii) to demonstrate the weaknesses of the report’s reliance on a generic notion of innovation; and (iii) to illustrate where the (lost) opportunities exist to insert a more critical/ normative understanding of the new framework.

The elements are offered as seven operating principles:

1. Increasing the Effectiveness of Federally Supported Research: Nowhere are we told clearly what constitutes effectiveness. Implicit in the text is the notion that effective policies are those that get industry and users involved in the creation of marketable products.

2. Capturing the Benefits of Partnership: The explication of this principle does not defend the value of partnerships as such, but only extols their virtue in terms of the market benefits that can be captured. While this moves us in the direction of networks, something many theorists of science now endorse, it is important to understand networks as institutions for the exchange of critical ideas, not just the promotion of markets.

3. Emphasizing Preventive Approaches and Sustainable Development: This is a laudable element of the set, but it is insufficiently developed. It does, however, emphasize the development of clean technologies and may be the best place to begin critically extending the policy in a direction which inserts normative choice into the framework.

4. Positioning Canada Completely within Emerging International Regulatory, Standards and Intellectual Property Regimes: Again, this seems a laudable element, especially where it is articulated in terms of building research networks. But once again, repeated reference to innovation does nothing to clarify what “innovation” means, only to further the impression that innovation is some sort of free-floating and unspecified criterion of evaluation. Here is yet another missed opportunity to elaborate critical norms of evaluation, as opposed to rhetorical images of excellence.

5. Building Information Networks – The Infrastructure of the Knowledge Economy: Predictably, the emphasis here is on the timely delivery of information to the institutions of commercial exploitation. There is no discussion of the general theoretical significance of the information technologies which already exist, certainly not of their importance for the establishment and maintenance of the free and critical exchange of information, the acknowledged sine qua non of scientific practice. Nor is there any critical assessment of the general relationships between decentralized information technologies and other technological regimes which might be the target of an innovative imagination.20

6. Extending Science and Technology Linkages Internationally: The general aspects of this principle are again quite laudable, seeming, as they do, to promote the international exchange of ideas among scientists. This aspect is muted in the set of initiatives proposed, however, all of which emphasize technological monitoring and intelligence.

7. Promoting a Stronger Science Culture: I find it hard to find in the text describing this principle anything other than the now- standard adoration of technology. If we are serious about promoting a stronger scientific culture, then we need to take very seriously the formation of critical discourses about science, technology and culture with a view to understanding the normative principles, not just the strategic principles, which are at stake.

I have made several judgements in the course of these brief remarks on Science and Technology for the New Century, judgements which readers can assess only by their own close reading the text. However, the general point, I think, is clear on even this cursory reading – that a generic and uncritical notion of innovation is philosophically and politically problematic. If innovation is linked intimately to markets in a way that minimizes the capacity of civil society (including the society of scientific practitioners) and the state to normatively assess the outcomes of these processes, if it functions to eliminate open discourse and to suppress the establishment of a framework of evaluation,21 then we abandon the very possibility of critically understanding the transformations of society which innovation can bring about.

There may be more than one way to interpret this situation. On the one hand, de la Mothe and Paquet interpret Science and Technology for the New Century as yet another attempt to introduce a national coordination of science in Canada. I would argue, however, that the goal of coordination as such has been dropped, to be replaced by an attempt to harmonize our discourses within the register of market theory. The undertaking can be seen as both more grand than the effort of the Lamontagne Report, since its scope is greater than just government science, and also more modest, since it has given up any pretense to manage the system as a whole. Indeed, the preoccupation with total systems management, characteristic of the period from the late 1960s until well into the 1980s, has been displaced by the growing emphasis on markets. On the other hand, one can interpret Science and Technology for the New Century as an abandonment of the whole policy goal, established as early as 1917, to coordinate science at all, even in a limited way focussed on government and academic science. Although it may seem that nothing of moment hinges on this difference, I believe that the second point of view will give rise to a more productive approach to scholarly research into the general relationship between science and politics. If we attempt to understand the brave new world of science and politics represented by Science and Technology for the New Century as yet another attempt to manage science, then we shall have missed the importance of the ideological disposition to minimize government, to privatize public enterprise and to muffle criticism of neo-liberal agendas.22 Ironically, we thereby miss the opportunity to understand what is really going on at the level of power and control. That is, by attempting to analyze emerging policies towards science and technology as though they were administrative instruments of coordination, we cut ourselves off from the possibility of understanding the ultimate agenda. If, as many of us suspect, that agenda has been scripted by the administrative (read “commercial”) side of the original political conflict between (scientific) autonomy and (political) authority, then the need for a critical response is vital. Historically, the struggle between the Republic of Science and science policy institutions has, as de la Mothe and Paquet argue, given rise to failures which call out for explanation. Moreover, the explanations which de la Mothe and Paquet offer are interesting and plausible, as far as they go. None the less, we lack an understanding of scientific practice as critical practice which is adequate to the task of legitimizing the voices of science as political voices.

If, however, we abandon the view that science policy is to be understood as a formal instrument of coordination and accept the notion that science policy, if meaningful at all, is to be implicit within both our scientific and our political practices, then we are more likely to be able to discern the limitations of the agonistic framing of the problem.23 To put it naively, we shall be able to understand better just how the authority/autonomy relationship plays itself out. As I have come to understand this problem, I would resist characterizing this point in terms of blame.

To put a more friendly spin on my characterization of the Science and Technology for the New Century, I would point out that it is characteristic of the post-modem condition.24 This is not the place to enter into a full account of what this means; it is sufficient to say that the situation is characterized by a suspicion of all attempts to unify our discourses within a single frame. For some, this suspicion arises only when faced with total frames which do violence to some fundamental value which they cherish. This is what happened when the Republic of Science was confronted with the “total systems view” advocated by the Science Council. It also happens when administrators are confronted with scientific discourses/practices which constitute themselves as a total resistence to external social or political goals and criteria.

No one can say with confidence just where scientific culture is going. I opened this essay with brief remarks on the notion of scientific culture, offering two tentative characterizations of it. These two characterizations, reason-based and utility-based, can be mapped, although imperfectly, onto the autonomy/authority aporia.25 The Republic of Science, generally speaking, interprets a scientific culture in terms of its steadfast commitment to the pursuit of truth, reason and open discourse. The world of industry, commerce and government, however, sees this as an idealization that must be subservient to a pragmatic utility. The political culture into which all these discourses are embedded has become increasingly fragmented and complex, however. The fragmentation can be seen in the breaking up of the NRC in the 1960s and 1970s. Since that time science-based departments within the Federal government have proliferated, taking on diverse and differentiated roles and responsibilities with respect to the coordination, management and funding of research.

I have openly communicated in this essay a sense of suspicion about the political agenda which has brought us to a point of such tension between science and politics. From the perspective of traditional science, it is hard not to feel that the very notion of critical inquiry has lost its value. At the same time, from the perspective of traditional politics, scientists’ resistance seems equally uncompromising, notwithstanding the growing enthusiasm with which some scientists seek strategic funding. There is clearly a vital need for an open and critical debate on such issues, a debate which respects both the scientific and the political perspectives while retaining the characteristic of an open critical discourse. I believe that the papers assembled within this special volume of the Journal of Canadian Studies have been prepared by their authors in this spirit and that together they can be meaningfully received as a contribution to such a critical debate. It is my belief that they are more than “voices in search of a conversation” (Wadland 52), although I concede that the critical conversation to which they contribute is only just beginning to form.

Volume 37 [middot] No. 3 [middot] (Automne 2002 Fall)

Notes

The principal argument, for which I take full responsibility, is mine. I wish, however, to thank Stephen Booking for his important editorial and critical input during the writing of this essay.

1. The notion of deliberation has become an important one in the context of science and technology policy, especially in the United States. See e.g., United States, Understanding Risk.

2. The Science Policy Research Unit is particularly significant because it had undertaken the development of an entrepreneurial model for its practices well before this became fashionable, that is to say, long before it became virtually mandatory during the Thatcher period in the UK to pursue such things as science policy studies by means of industrial partnerships and networks. As a consequence, at least in the early days, Sussex enjoyed greater success than other universities with this sort of enterprise, having established itself as a player early in the process. The situation is comparable, generally, to the successes of the University of Waterloo as an entrepreneurial institution in Canada.

3. This point was made by Yves Gingras as an oral intervention at a Workshop on Science Policy, held as part of the conference on Science and Culture at Trent University in 1997. At the time this observation seemed somewhat disconcerting (to me), but it has become clear, not only that Gingras was right about the demise of the expression, but that the expression does not serve us well. Although I use the term in this essay, I do so with the intention of drawing attention to its limitations.

4. John de la Mothe points out that the term was used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as “science for policy and policy for science” (“Government Science”). While this can hardly serve as an analytic definition, it does point out that the influence is bidirectional. Not only do the products and results of scientific practices have utility for public policy in general (think of risk assessment and its relevance to health care), but policies which impact on the practices of science can have a huge influence on the kind of knowledge that is created, the research methods that are most actively developed, the research questions that are seriously asked, and even the kind of criteria that are invoked to evaluate the output of scientific practices. To rephrase the OECD slogan, science evaluates policy and policy evaluates science.

5. The University of Toronto offered its first courses in natural philosophy in 1843 (see Allin).

6. According to the historical summary of NSERCC, posted on their web site, Canadian scientists had briefly flirted with the idea of formally associating themselves with the newly created British NRC. It is not clear, however, whether detailed models had been thought through.

7. Consistent with earlier literature on science policy, I shall be using the notion of coordination somewhat loosely. It arises out of a general interest in rationalizing the allocation of resources with respect to scientific activities, especially where those activities occur within the purview of government. Tensions arise when this loose notion settles into a model of central management. It was perceived to do so by scientists after the publication of the Lamontagne report, but more recently, other tensions have arisen as market models take us away from this style of central management towards a form of decentralization driven by market dynamics that seem to offer no place for critical assessment.

8. The Economic Council of Canada was created at about the same time.

9. This is perhaps most obvious in the context of radiation protection regulations, especially when the concept of optimization is taken into account along with the concept of a system. See e.g., International Commission on Radiological Protection.

10. What I mean by this is that the optimal solution can be computed once the constraints on the optimization problem have all been stated. Typically, however, some of the constraints are themselves the expression of significant social judgments.

11. Throughout this essay I use “normative” in its critical (philosophical) sense, meaning “having to do with general notions of evaluation.” I do not use it to refer to a “set of fixed norms or standards.” Whether or not norms, in the second sense, are grounded in normative criteria, in the first sense, depends, in effect, on whether or not the framework is appropriately critical.

12. I have deliberately limited my comments here to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERCC), but it should be noted that the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) was created at about the same time to be an institution responsible for funding academic research in the humanities and social sciences. Just as the NRC was losing some of its previous status, the scope of the Canada Council’s activities in the arts were also being reduced. One is reminded of a theme discussed by John Wadland – in a broader context affecting other Canadian institutions as the proliferating organizations become “voices in search of a conversation” (52).

13. Jeremy Rifkin, in The Hydrogen Economy, explores the idea that after the fossil fuel economy we can imagine a new technological regime, based on hydrogen, which would entail a major transformation of the social and economic infrastructure. The details of this regime, which would involve a radical decentralization of the production of power, are not so important to my argument as the idea that science and technology are clearly seen to play an enormous role in the normative reformation of society.

14. Kuhn’s book takes its title from one of the essays contained within it: “The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific Research.” I must emphasize that Kuhn understands his essential tension as arising internal to scientific practices. Writing about the divergence (exploring new ideas within the imagination) and convergence (working to consolidate ideas which have proven productive), he says: “Since these two modes of thought are inevitably in conflict, it will follow that the ability to support a tension that can occasionally become almost unbearable is one of the prime requisites for the very best sort of scientific research” (226).

15. See Liora Salter for a general discussion of the concept of mandated science. This expression is sometimes limited to science undertaken under contract with government, the expression sponsored science then being used to refer to research done under contract with the private sector.

16. These are the three fundamental categories used by the Lamontagne Report, with innovation treated as a third (341). The report cites Thomas Kuhn (“Relations”) in support of its contention that science and technology must be kept conceptually distinct: “As a first approximation, the historian of socioeconomic development would do well to treat science and technology as radically distinct enterprises, not unlike the sciences and the arts,” ignoring both the qualification “as a first approximation” and the target of Kuhn’s comment, historians. This supports their contention that the effects of science upon society are always transmitted through technology, adding that the products of science (knowledge) are always good, whereas the products of technology may or may not be good. Later the report states, “The Commission believes that the basic purpose of mission-oriented research and development, wherever they are done, is innovation” (376). This linear view of science, technology and innovation is seriously problematic from a public policy point of view, as my discussion of the “essential tension” between science and politics shows.

17. A metaphor first suggested by Michael Polanyi.

18. Recall the virtual adoration of science and scientists which arose in the late 1950s after Sputnik gave them pride of place in the national race for a p