A deep crisis of credibility?

The scientific community’s dominating paradigm is not necessarily the 'truest' and is loosing it's 20th century status.

Philosopher and writer Giorgio Agamben, unpacking the ideas within his new book Where Are We Now: The Epidemic as Politics (published 2021) with Andrea Pensotti, editor of Journal Of Biological Sciences. Presenting a shorter edit of the interview.

Agamben’s book has generated different and mainly negative reactions, but that is plain reactionary. Agamben, a well known voice in European academia, carrying forth the legacy of Hannah Ardent, Karl Popper, Walter Benjamin and Michael Foucault, yet really contemporary to our 21st century scene. He has consistently critiqued the concept of sovereignty, the degraded state of democracy, especially in western Europe which appears more and more like “Inverted Totalitarianism” (Sheldon Wolin, 2002). In his new book, Agamben is venturing into darker and problematic landscapes, which reveal the current relationship between science and society, especially between big pharma, medicines, data, politics, law, citizens, the invasive media and state. A deep fragmentation is unraveling.

”A Naked Life”
Andrea Pensotti : About ‘personalization’ and prediction gaining ground in medicine. Thanks to new diagnostic tools and big data, the experts claim to predict the individual risk of developing certain diseases in life. Once these risks are known, people can be directed towards appropriate lifestyles. Besides these screenings for genetic predisposition, new technological tools known as “wearables” enable the constant monitoring of certain vital parameters. Today, they are mainly meant for sports-persons who want to continually improve their performance. Soon, however, they could be extended to all citizens. Apparently such an approach to medicine is guiding us toward what you have defined as life reduced to mere biology— “naked life”. Nonetheless, many scientists are questioning the ethical and technical feasibility of such a scenario. Would you share a reflection on this topic? Also, in your opinion, what should be done to reverse the trend?

Giorgio Agamben : In the perspective that you have outlined, the critical moment is about crossing the threshold — beyond which personalization, prediction, and screening are no more lifestyle suggestions, but become legal obligations forced by the state and fulfilled by bio-pharma. That threshold has been crossed. What used to be presented as a ‘health right’ has become an ‘obligation to be fulfilled at any price’. For example, the Italian doctor’s professional oath prohibited this by mentioning, “respect for civil rights regarding the person’s autonomy” (see also WMA Declaration of Geneva: “I will respect the autonomy and dignity of my patient” and “I will not use my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat”—translator’s note). What happened during the COVID-19 pandemic was all outside such oaths and ethics.

At least for now, people have accepted not only to give up their constitutional freedoms, social relations, and political and religious beliefs—they have even let their loved ones die in solitude and without a funeral. In this sense, it can be said that human existence has been reduced to a biological fact, to a naked life to be saved at any cost. This abstraction, though, is so powerful that people have sacrificed their normal conditions of life to it.

An emerging example - The gut microbes harboured by babies born during the early months of the COVID-19 lockdown(s) differ from those of babies born before the pandemic.

For example, take the intensive care unit, with mechanical ventilators, cardiopulmonary bypass, machines and readers to maintain body temperature, vital fluids, etc can indefinitely suspend a human body between life and death. This is a dark area, which must not go beyond its strictly medical boundaries. Instead, what happened with the pandemic is that this purely vegetative life, this body artificially suspended between life and death, has become the new political paradigm for citizens to regulate their behavior. What is most impressive in what we are experiencing is that—at any price— a naked life is kept separate in an abstract way from an intellectual and spiritual life. Then, it is imposed not as a criterion of life, but of mere survival.

”Truth and Falsification”
Andrea Pensotti : So as an example, in 2016 Nature had published the results of a survey revealing that over 1,500 scientists - who had failed to reproduce data obtained by colleagues. Dr. Glenn Bagley, the oncology director of the multinational corporation, AMGEN encountered the same problem in 2011-12. Before investing several million euros in a new drug research project, he had decided to replicate the 53 experiments on which their development strategy was based. He could only replicate 11% of them (S.Baker 2016). You recently published a post: “On True and False”. Would you help us further investigate this issue?

Giorgio Agamben : Paradoxically, science is facing an unprecedented deep crisis of credibility. Call it faith. Especially when it comes to the reliability of information, of the data it produces and the truthfulness of its statements. Despite this, it seems almost impossible to bring out hypotheses and results other than those that are universally recognized as “scientific truths”. Nothing more can be established in public and academic opinion as of now. Ask why? Also many problematic political and economic decisions are made on the basis of such scientific truths.

Here, we see first hand that the problem of truth is not an abstract philosophical problem. Rather, it is something extremely concrete, which determines the life of human beings in a considerable way. As far as scientific truth is concerned, a famous book by Thomas Kuhn had already shown that the scientific community’s dominating paradigm is not necessarily the truest, but simply the one that is able to conquer the largest share of followers. This is also real, now, beyond scientific truth. Humanity is has entered a phase, call it era, of its history in which truth is reduced to a moment in the movement of the false. In other, more precise words, this movement is the omnipervasive unfolding of a language that no longer contains any criteria for distinguishing what it is true from what is false.

True is that speech which is declared as such and which must be kept true, even if its untruth is proven. In the end, it is essential for the system that any distinction between true and false fades. Hence, confusion grows among conflicting news that is even spread by official bodies. This means calling into question the language itself as the place where truth manifests itself. Now, what happens in a society that has renounced the truth and in which human beings can only silently observe the multiform and contradictory movement of falsehood? In order to stop this movement, everyone must have the courage to ask the only question that matters without compromise: what is a true word? To end, faced with a non-truth imposed by law, we can and must resist, question and testify the truth.

“Medicine as a religion?”
Giorgio Agamben : If we call religion what people think they believe in, then science is certainly a religion today. However, a distinction must be made in every religion between the dogmatic apparatus (the truths in which one must believe) and the cult, that is, the behaviors and practices that derive from it.

The common believer could ignore the dogmas and heresies that theologians had passionately debated in the past. Likewise, the common person of today can completely ignore the scientific theories that scientists argue about. And they do. However, the cult, i.e. the practices and behaviors increasingly define him or her, and this is particularly true for medicine. Furthermore, just as the Christian religion proposed salvation through the cult, so does medicine target health through therapy. The first is about sin and the other is about illness, but the analogy is clear.

Health in this sense is a secularization of that “eternal life” that the Christians hoped to obtain through their cultural practices. The medicalization of life had already been growing beyond all measure (1980s-till now) but it has become permanent and all-pervasive in the situation we are experiencing today. It is no longer a question of taking medicine or having a medical examination or surgery, if necessary: the whole life of human beings must become the place of an uninterrupted worship at every moment. The enemy, the virus, is invisible and always present and must be fought with no truce in every moment of one’s existence.

“Philosophy of Nature”
Andrea Pensotti : In the past, science used to be identified as the “Philosophy of Nature”. People like Goethe who were interested in science, philosophy, and literature were considered the most intelligent. Today, science has turned toward a constantly increasing specialization that has undoubtedly led to enormous technical scientific advances. These are two radically divergent paths. What do you recommend to young students and researchers who are taking their first steps in the world of science today?

Giorgio Agamben : An important moment in history, especially here in the West, was when philosophy could no longer dominate the sciences. Over time, science has unlinked itself from such controls and older ways of thinking. Science was a ‘doctrine of knowledge capable of setting limits to any experience’ (Emmanuel Kant). But that changed a long time back. I do not think that fits the task of philosophy or science today. The relationship between thought and science is not played on the level of knowledge.

Philosophy is not a science— nor can it be resolved into a doctrine of knowledge. In fact, science has shown that it does not need philosophy at all. Philosophy is always about ethics. It always implies a form of life. Now, this is true for every single human being and, therefore, also for every scientist who does not want to give up being human. On many occasions, scientists do not think like non-scientists. Extreme cases have shown that they are ready to unscrupulously sacrifice ethics for the interests of science. Otherwise we would not have seen illustrious scientists experimenting on Nazi camp deportees. Today thousands and thousands of scientists do the same on animal and plant life, around the world on a daily basis. I would remind a young person taking his first steps in science to never sacrifice an ethical principle, to her or his own will to know. Many old white scientists in the west, have no problems when thousands of people suffer or die because of disastrous outcomes of scientific policy and arrogance.

”And Resistance?”
Andrea Pensotti : You spoke of the need to develop new forms of resistance. Can you give us some examples?

Giorgio Agamben : Well, I am a philosopher, not a strategist. Of course, the clear awareness of one’s situation is the first condition for finding a way out. I can only add that I do not believe today’s ‘way out’ necessarily will change, as it has been long believed, through a struggle, revolution, or some say take back, reconquest of power. There can be no good power—and, therefore, no good state either. We can only, in an unjust and false society, attest to the presence of the right and the true. We could in the middle of hell, testify of heaven?

Complete interview on quodlibet.it (Italy)