OPENING UP SPACES OF “GOOD FAITH”

About half a century ago, two incisive questions were raised, one by John von Neumann: Can we survive technology? (1955), and the other by Hannah Arendt, asking: Under which conditions is a non-totalitarian world possible? (1958). Here are their respective answers.

According to von Neumann: “For progress there is no cure. Any attempt to find automatically safe channels for the present explosive variety of progress must lead to frustration. The only safety possible is relative, and it lies in an intelligent exercise of day-to-day judgment.”

According to Arendt, against recurrent totalitarian temptations, the hope lies in the possibility of opening political spaces, public spaces allowing for resistance and reconstruction.

Occurring three decades later, the fall of the Berlin wall and of the Soviet Union may have generated an illusion that the totalitarian page was turned, but the relief was brief. Nowadays the massive hegemony of the dominant power in all domains (military, economic, scientific, technical, media) induces a convergence of the two questions and increases their relevance.

Before these joint technical and political threats, von Neumann’s answer (reliance on expert steering) appears too technocratic and Arendt’s too much dependent on the hazards of politician arenas. Admittedly, previous answers retain partial pertinence, yet they now prove insufficient overall. Thus, taking lessons from experience, an emphasis is put upon the possibility of opening spaces up of “good faith.”

Good faith is an expression belonging to judicial terminology, but also to common language where its multiple meanings are useful for our present purpose: candour, honesty, authenticity, etc. Science is established on a basis of trust. And it may be reckoned that the deep foundation for the successes of the scientific enterprise lies in ‘a right to error in good faith’, within colleges of peers.

As for the yearning to become stakeholder in ‘spaces of trust’, I believe it widely shared, even if the notion may seem utopian. To my knowledge, the most eloquent evocation of this yearning is to be found in a speech of Paul Valéry (1934):
"All that we see however leads to conceive by contrast the idea of a resistance to confusion, to haste, to versatility, to facility, to passions real and simulated. One thinks of an island where would be kept the best of human culture. Without effective power, solely through its existence and what would spread into the public […], this centre of observation, of compound reflection and foresight would exert an action indefinable, but constant. A kind of eminent conscience would watch over the city."

How could such a lofty dream inspire realistic and robust practices? Now the ethical movement in the sciences (whose three main streams are: science and war, future of the planet, bioethics) provides example of a process of vast magnitude, and with a view to the long term. In a precursor article Science and Human Rights, published by UNESCO (1972), René Cassin foresaw the advent of ethics committees in science.

Twenty years later, the concept of ‘ethics spaces’ (more open in all respects) appeared. The functioning of these institutions is often criticised from without and from within. Nevertheless, the experience thus acquired helps to define the minimal conditions necessary for access to a higher level: establish a space of good faith.

At the level of European academies, the *ALLEA’s science & ethics committee discovered that three principles were sufficient to provide a common basis for deliberation and action: good faith (admit the existence of problems as they stand), good will (attempt to solve those problems as well as possible) and fair play (between disciplines, regions, cultures, genders and generations).

Last year, I was co-opted to chair the steering committee for a citizens’ conference on nanotechnologies, organized by the Ile de France region of EUROSCIENCE. The project is to empower a panel of lay citizens with reliable knowledge during an initial preparation stage, so that in a final public debate they become able to engage a panel of experts and leaders without being cowed by authority (‘blinded by science’). In brief, the challenge is to help lay citizens to withstand higher-ups in knowledge and power. A citizens’ conference is thus a complex exercise in participatory democracy which involves several categories of actors. Nevertheless, it turned out that the same three principles proved themselves in the event, the full success of the process depending on a steadfast determination to open spaces of good faith within the steering committee, and between experts and citizens.

Gérard Toulouse
Physicist at Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris), founding member of Euroscience
Former Chair (2001-2006) of the Standing Committee on Science & Ethics of ALLEA
European Academies)
* All European Academies: http://www.allea.org/

(Taken from “The Euroscientist no. 1” - Shortened version of a text first published in Recueil Dalloz, Paris, 5 July 2007)