Couple of decades ago I read a classic compilation of papers in biology, put together under the name of “science as a way of knowing”. The main point was to contrast the idea that science is about the results, with a view where the right answer is not as important as the right research method. Good science is not so much about the new numbers obtained in the last experiment, but about the design of the experiment itself, the possible mistakes and problems that it has, and how will those be solved the next time. After all, the one and only certainty that a scientist has is that her findings will be superseded sooner or later. So science is not so much about getting some sort of stable platonic truth, but much more about moving in the direction that gets us close to it.
Today I expend quite some hours with a bunch of members of my local green party, working on our forthcoming election program. At this time we have interviewed lots and lots of experts, former and active politicians, and quite some members too. Some of our texts begin to take shape, with lists of policies that we intend to apply. And now we are on the, arguably, most interesting part of the whole process. We need to make explicit, at least for ourselves, what is the connecting line that gives coherency to our program. Nowadays, the list of things that the government of a dutch city will do in 4 years time is an imposing amount of fairly specific and arcane things. But no list can be exhaustive. The public should not be whoed by the simple: “look, this is what we are going to do”. It is more interesting to make explicit what are we going to do when an impredictable situation arises.
In other times, this question was easily answered by the ideology of your party. The duality progressive conservative defined the politics of post war, with social democrats and christian democrats being clear opponents. Nowadays things are more complex. We have added the duality authoritarian/libertarian as a extra dimension to separe existing parties. And yet it is not enough to say “we are more progressive than conservative and more libertarian than authoritarian”. Nowadays plenty of parties define themselves like that. So, what is our thing? what is our mojo? And let’s be honest, our party definition doesn’t bring us much further either. The core idea of our party is that development, the attainment of welfare, has to be sustained for the years to come. So we understand that poverty can not be alleviated by destroying nature, not that nature can be preserved at all costs. Ours is a party of balance. But how much do my last two sentences tell you how are we going to run a city? Not so much. So we need to say more.
And coming back to that science as a way of knowing of my past, I begin to wonder if we need to understand politics also as a process, and say so loud and clear. Perhaps it is not so important that we place thirty windmills in Utrecht in the next four years, or that we say that we will do so. Perhaps it is more important to make explicit how we would like to finance our windmills, how we decide that thirty was a good number and in which conditions we might go for forty, or perhaps for twenty. Or what will happen if neighbors oppose our windmills. Will we back off, as we have done before? Or shall we organize information events, debates and further consultations? What do we thing is more important, that more windmills come or that our society supports the idea of having more windmills?
Perhaps what we need to tell and to argue and to support is for how a way of doing politics, rather than the results of politics. After all I know that I do not hold the truth in my hand, that I am not the one that should decide for you which Utrecht is the best Utrecht. That rather than telling, I offer to lead a conversation about Utrecht, an exchange where we all can learn, and move forward. I dare to believe that if we manage to convincingly argue that our process, our way of doing politics starts and ends with hearing, instead of telling, then we’ll be, actually, moving forward.
https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/24/2/467/2018517
Thank you Inti for the link to that paper and the similarity you propose between science and politics. It seems jazzy, according to Satchmo. Someone once said to me that he said: "Jazz is not what you do, but how you do it."
More hearing, less telling you say, as we chat the other day about more questions told. A "how" for a political campaign based on questions could be a worthy experiment. A question, if made with candor, is a nice way to say "I wanna listen." But a question is also a bet on possible answers. There is randomness, improv. Risk.
It also happens in science. Let's get prepared to receive false positives and negatives. Let kosher answers stay and evolve.
Let the party morph from green answers to green questions. A party of listeners. A green radar.