Abstract
Mark Brown and David Guston have outlined a framework for addressing state protection of scientific freedom in the contemporary United States, arguing that a limited freedom of scientific research improves democratic governance. I show how this reasoning, with modification, can be applied to protection of scientific freedom in a democratic lunar society, and I argue that lunar society will experience a comparatively greater need to ensure scientific freedom.
Thanks to the following individuals for discussion and comments: Charles Cockell, Tony Milligan, John Rummel, Annalea Beattie, Erik Persson, Janet De Vigne, John Carter McKnight, Euan Monoghan, and Mukesh Bhatt. Thanks also to Robert Feleppa for commenting on an earlier draft.
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Notes
- 1.
One kind of exception here is weapons research (there are likely to be other exceptions). Governments might have compelling interests to (a) support weapons research, but also to (b) prohibit citizens from freely engaging in such research.
- 2.
- 3.
Ignoring for the duration the “ought implies can” objection that arises whenever there are too many promising projects and too little available funding.
- 4.
I will not discuss the implications of this reasoning for private sector science, but I should not in any way be taken as suggesting that scientific freedom in the private sector is of little consequence. For discussion see Frankel (2009).
- 5.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
- 6.
- 7.
I will not judge whether this is true of the contemporary United States. But I will point out that this ordering is contingent—it is possible that there exist societies for which it is most important for research to satisfy intellectual curiosity, for example. In Sect. 13.3 I will revisit the issue of ordering for lunar society.
- 8.
Brown and Guston do suggest that the social sciences are more likely to impact democratic deliberation, which “leads to the perhaps surprising conclusion that in some cases the social sciences may have a stronger claim than the natural sciences to a right to research” (ibid., p. 363).
- 9.
See, e.g., Kitcher’s “significance graph” for the question “how do organisms develop?” (ibid., p. 79).
- 10.
- 11.
This premise is stated more weakly than is strictly necessary, because we know that many forms of scientific research are not just likely to but do in fact contribute to democratic deliberation.
- 12.
One worry here concerns the breadth of support necessary for genuine scientific freedom of means for some particular area of research. Would a government satisfy its obligation to ensure this freedom by supporting a single individual's research? Or, in contrast, could a government only satisfy its obligation to ensure this freedom when all interested parties are provided the means to conduct research in the area? Neither extreme is acceptable. What will be required for this position to work is (a) some way of determining how much research activity is reasonable for a particular kind of inquiry, and (b) a way of ensuring that, once the means are provided, the remaining scientific work is free from state control (beyond uncontroversial ethical demands, e.g. not to abuse research subjects).
- 13.
Which I explore in more detail in (Schwartz 2014).
- 14.
For discussion about the impact of space science on scientific literacy in the United States, see Fraknoi (2007).
- 15.
All of these claims are complicated by the fact that scientific research is serendipitous—and it is in general not possible to predict what research will produce answers to what questions. Nor is it possible to predict what research will lead to the development of socially and economically fruitful methods and technologies. And nor is it possible to predict what research will become infused into lay culture. We might well decide to take this as sufficient justification for wide-ranging support of pure, autonomous scientific research—a position that is well-represented in the work of Gonzalo Munévar.
- 16.
For a related judgment, see Wilholt (2006).
- 17.
After all, we can also be confident that lunar citizens will experience challenges to personal liberty that might seem unacceptable to those accustomed to modern occidental living—especially assuming that lunar citizens will reside in cramped subsurface habitats. See Cockell (2013) for an extensive discussion of questions related to personal liberties in space.
- 18.
Though perhaps it only seems bleak and homogeneous to those of us not reared on the Moon.
- 19.
Thanks to John Rummel for the following observation.
- 20.
A related ethical question that I do not have space to discuss is the following: Would it be permissible in the first place to establish a lunar society without knowing beforehand that human beings are capable of living and reproducing in lunar gravity? Perhaps this is the kind of research that ought to be conducted before the establishment of a lunar society.
- 21.
Thanks to Charles Cockell for discussion about the political relevance of astrobiology.
- 22.
On the other hand, if lunar society comes to depend for its existence on the exploitation of asteroid material, then it would have further and stronger reasons for ensuring freedom of astronomical research.
- 23.
To this list I would add economics, social science, and psychology, as these fields also appear to be essential for devising the social and political tools necessary for the maintenance of a lunar society.
- 24.
Of course, some reasoning derived from the Brown-Guston framework can easily accommodate the case of oxygen. Access to oxygen is a material precondition of democratic deliberation, and thus, citizens should have an extremely strongly protected right to such access.
- 25.
Some of the more common objections to the state support of science, including state support of space science, include the humanitarian objection that (a) money spent on science could be better spent elsewhere, and the libertarian objection that (b) the state is not an appropriate agency to forward the progress of science. The libertarian objection is nowadays often raised against government-funded space science. Here is not the place to counter these objections.
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Schwartz, J.S.J. (2015). Rendezvous with Research: Government Support of Science in a Space Society. In: Cockell, C. (eds) Human Governance Beyond Earth. Space and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18063-2_13
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