The Other Way That Science Can Save the World: Scientific Thinking for All

Inselhalle

Main Hall

Moderator: Stefan H. E. Kaufmann
Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Germany

We live in “the best of times and the worst of times,” in a world that on the one hand may be on the brink of existential disaster—climatic, biological, or nuclear—but also a world that could be on the verge of entering an epoch of self-sustaining planetwide flourishing, with food, shelter, and education for all.

In this two-sided context, science offers our society something that is very important well beyond physics, biology, and chemistry. It has developed a whole approach to problem solving that is particularly relevant to the problems of our current world, where it often seems like we are blowing wonderful opportunities by squabbling. So, learning the ways of scientific thinking may be even more important than the results of science for all of us who need to make decisions and be effective in the world. Science shows us the many ways that we fool ourselves and all the forms of rigorous skepticism needed to avoid them, but it also provides a can-do culture that allows us to stick to a problem long enough to solve it. However, decisions are not just about facts, they are also driven by values, and fears and ambitions and goals. So if we care about including facts in decision making then we must pay attention to the deliberative group techniques needed to weave the facts with the values, fears, and ambitions, otherwise it will be the facts that are lost in the process. Finally, at its aspirational best, the culture of science builds productively on disagreement to sharpen our thinking, by authorizing our doubters to tell us where we are going wrong.

As scientists, we have the opportunity to share these approaches that are often only taught by apprenticeship in science research, as a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Everybody should have these skills, whether or not they intend to be scientists. And ideally this vocabulary of thinking skills can become a bridge across the political divides.