YANLIŞ SORULAR, YANLIŞ ÖZERKLİK: BİLİM, FON REJİMLERİ VE HAKİKAT KRİZİ

Abstract

Bu makale, bilimin iktisat ve iktidar tarafından “ne ölçüde” etkilendiğini soran hâkim literatürü tersyüz etmektedir. Metnin temel tezi, “bilim ne kadar etkileniyor, çekirdeğe müdahale var mı?” türü soruların baştan yanlış olduğu ve bilimin hâlâ kısmen özerk bir hakikat alanı olduğu varsayımını ideolojik olarak yeniden ürettiğidir. Çalışma önce, bilimin görece özerkliği, bükülmüş kamusal etki, eş-üretim, güçlü toplumsal belirlenim ve neoliberal tekno-bilimsel kapitalizm şeklinde sınıflandırılan beş pozisyonu kuramsal olarak yeniden inşa etmekte; ardından bu pozisyonların, çağdaş fonlama rejimleri, “öncelikli alanlar”, mega-projeler, akademik kapitalizm ve post-truth hakikat rejimi karşısında neden yetersiz kaldığını göstermektedir. Özellikle psödo-bilim sınırındaki milyar dolarlık projelerin stratejik fon akışları, iktisat disiplininde ortodoksi–heretik ayrımı yoluyla kurumsal dışlama mekanizmaları ve popüler olanın hakikatin yerini aldığı post-truth bağlamı, bilimin iktisat–iktidar hapishanesine içkinleştiğini somutlaştıran örnekler olarak tartışılmaktadır. Son bölümde makale, bilimin artık “dışarıdan etkilenmiş” bir alan değil, bizzat iktisadi ve iktidari paradigmaların içsel bir fonksiyonu olduğunu savunmakta; bu nedenle bilimsel özerklik ve tarafsızlık söylemlerinin meşruiyet üretici ideolojik aygıtlar olarak işlediğini öne sürmektedir. Çıkış imkânı, yeni sosyolojik kavramlar üretmekte değil, bilimi güçlü bir hakikat, ontoloji ve metafizik zeminde yeniden düşünmekte görülmektedir.

Keywords

• Bilim–iktidar–iktisat ilişkisi
• bilimsel özerklik miti
• tekno-bilimsel kapitalizm
• metafiziksel temel
• hakikat rejimi-post-truth

WRONG QUESTIONS, FALSE AUTONOMY: SCIENCE, FUNDING REGIMES, AND THE CRISIS OF TRUTH

Abstract

This article overturns the dominant literature that asks to what extent science is “influenced” by economic and political power. Its central claim is that questions such as “How much is science affected?” or “Is there interference in theory–experiment–falsification?” are fundamentally misdirected, because they ideologically reproduce the assumption that there still exists a partly autonomous, truth-bearing scientific core. The paper first reconstructs five positions—scientific autonomy, distorted public circulation, co-production, strong social determination, and neoliberal technoscientific capitalism—and then argues that all of them are inadequate in the face of contemporary funding regimes, “priority areas,” mega-projects, academic capitalism, and the post-truth condition. Billion-dollar physics projects at the edge of pseudo-science, strategically channelled funding, the orthodox–heretic divide in economics as a mechanism of institutional exclusion, and the replacement of truth by popularity in post-truth societies are discussed as concrete manifestations of science’s full internalization within the prison of economy and power. In its concluding part, the article argues that science today is no longer an externally “affected” domain, but an internal function of economic and political paradigms; accordingly, discourses of scientific autonomy and neutrality operate as ideological devices for legitimacy production. The only possible escape route is not the invention of ever more complex sociological vocabularies, but a renewed effort to think science on the basis of a strong horizon of truth, ontology, and metaphysics.

Keywords

• Science–power–economy relation
• myth of scientific autonomy
• technoscientific capitalism
• metaphysical foundation
• post-truth and truth regime

References

1. Anker, P. (2011). Naomi Oreskes; Erik M. Conway. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming [Kitap incelemesi]. Isis, 102(3), 589–590.
2. Baker, M. (2010). Securing a sustainable future for higher education? The Browne Review and the end of public funding. London: University and College Union.
3. Bandola-Gill, J., Petersohn, S., & Rogge, J.-C. (2023). The politics of excellence: Research funding, priority-setting and epistemic inequality in Europe. Science and Public Policy, 50(1), 47–58.
4. Barnes, B. (1974). Scientific knowledge and sociological theory. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
5. Beckmann, A. (2013). Neoliberalisation, marketisation and the new managerialism in education. Educational Policy Analysis and Strategic Research, 8(1), 5–25.
6. Birch, K. (2020). Technoscience rent: Toward a theory of rentiership. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 45(1), 3–33.
7. Birch, K., & Muniesa, F. (Eds.). (2020). Assetization: Turning things into assets in technoscientific capitalism. MIT Press.
8. Bloor, D. (1991). Knowledge and social imagery (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. (İlk baskı 1976).

9. Callon, M. (1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief: A new sociology of knowledge? (pp. 196–233). Routledge & Kegan Paul.
10. CERN Courier. (2018). Procurement at the forefront of technology. CERN Courier, 58(3), 25–28.
11. Collins, H. M. (1985). Changing order: Replication and induction in scientific practice. Sage.
12. Cushing, J. T. (1994). Quantum mechanics: Historical contingency and the Copenhagen hegemony. University of Chicago Press.
13. Del Santo, F. (2019). Striving for realism, not for determinism: Historical misconceptions about quantum mechanics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 66, 136–144.
14. Di Maio, G. (2013). The new invisible hand: Financial markets and knowledge production in contemporary science. Minerva, 51(2), 147–167.
15. Felli, R. (2014). On climate rent. Historical Materialism, 22(3–4), 251–280.
16. Fuller, S. (2013). Towards a geopolitics of science. In I. Jarvie & J. Zamora-Bonilla (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of the philosophy of social science (pp. 757–773). Sage.
17. Godfrey-Smith, P. (2003). Theory and reality: An introduction to the philosophy of science. University of Chicago Press.
18. Graeber, D. (2011). Debt: The first 5,000 years. Melville House.
19. Greenberg, D. S. (2007). Science for sale: The perils, rewards, and delusions of campus capitalism. University of Chicago Press.
20. Hacking, I. (1983). Representing and intervening: Introductory topics in the philosophy of natural science. Cambridge University Press.
21. Hannon, M. (2023). The politics of post-truth. Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, 35(1–2), 40–62.
22. Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology (D. Carr, Trans.). Northwestern University Press.
23. Jasanoff, S. (Ed.). (2004a). States of knowledge: The co-production of science and social order. Routledge.
24. Jasanoff, S. (2004b). The idiom of co-production. In S. Jasanoff (Ed.), States of knowledge: The co-production of science and social order (pp. 1–12). Routledge.
25. Jasanoff, S. (2015). Future imperfect: Science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. In S. Jasanoff & S.-H. Kim (Eds.), Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power (pp. 1–33). University of Chicago Press.
26. Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S.-H. (2009). Containing the atom: Sociotechnical imaginaries and nuclear power in the United States and South Korea. Minerva, 47(2), 119–146.
27. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Harvard University Press.
28. Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern (C. Porter, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
29. Lave, R., Mirowski, P., & Randalls, S. (2010). Introduction: STS and neoliberal science. Social Studies of Science, 40(5), 659–675.
30. Le Monde. (2025, 10 Nisan). Ce que l’on sait du futur accélérateur de particules géant du CERN. Le Monde.
31. Lee, F. S. (2009). A history of heterodox economics: Challenging the mainstream in the twentieth century. Routledge.
32. Manco, A. (2022). Mapping global science “priority areas”: A critical overview of national research strategies. Science and Public Policy, 49(3), 437–449.
33. Markowitz, G. (2009). “Children, workers, and families: The evolving health hazards of lead.” American Journal of Public Health, 99(S3), S271–S279.
34. Markowitz, G., & Rosner, D. (2002). Deceit and denial: The deadly politics of industrial pollution. University of California Press.
35. McGarity, T. O., & Wagner, W. E. (2008). Bending science: How special interests corrupt public health research. Harvard University Press.
36. McIntyre, L. C. (2018). Post-truth. MIT Press.
37. McKie, R. (2025, 29 Mart). Just a big toy – or key to the universe? Row over even larger hadron collider. The Guardian.
38. Merton, R. K. (1973). The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. University of Chicago Press.
39. Michaels, D. (2005). Doubt is their product. Scientific American, 292(6), 96–101.
40. Miller, C. A. (2004). Climate science and the making of a global political order. In S. Jasanoff (Ed.), States of knowledge: The co-production of science and social order (pp. 46–66). Routledge.
41. Mirowski, P. (2011). Science-mart: Privatizing American science. Harvard University Press.
42. O’Hara, P. (2011). Heterodox economics and the crisis: A methodological appraisal. Forum for Social Economics, 40(3), 283–300.
43. Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2010). Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. Bloomsbury Press.
44. Oxford Languages. (2016). Post-truth. In Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016. Oxford University Press.
45. Popper, K. (2002). The logic of scientific discovery. Routledge. (İlk baskı 1934).
46. Proctor, R. N. (2008). Agnotology: A missing term to describe the cultural production of ignorance (and its study). In R. N. Proctor & L. Schiebinger (Eds.), Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ignorance (pp. 1–33). Stanford University Press.
47. Rhoades, G., & Slaughter, S. (2004). Academic capitalism in the new economy: Challenges and choices. American Academic, 1(1), 37–60.
48. Rosner, D. (2009). “Doubt is their product”: How industry’s assault on science threatens your health. American Journal of Public Health, 99(S3), S274–S276.
49. Sá, C. M., & Harden-Wolfson, P. (2018). The politics of priority-setting in higher education: Science, technology, and innovation policy. In J. C. Shin & P. Teixeira (Eds.), Encyclopedia of international higher education systems and institutions. Springer.
50. Shapin, S., & Schaffer, S. (1985). Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life. Princeton University Press.
51. Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state, and higher education. Johns Hopkins University Press.
52. Sokal, A., & Bricmont, J. (1998). Fashionable nonsense: Postmodern intellectuals’ abuse of science. Picador.
53. Thompson, C. (2004). Co-producing CITES and the African elephant. In S. Jasanoff (Ed.), States of knowledge: The co-production of science and social order (pp. 67–86). Routledge.
54. Tyfield, D. (2012). The economics of science: A critical realist overview (Vols. 1–2). Routledge.
55. van Strien, M. (2023). The reconciliation of determinism and indeterminism in quantum physics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 81, 1–11.
56. Viales-Hurtado, M. (2021). Big science and dependent development: The political economy of mega-projects in Latin America. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 4(1), 1–20.
57. Waterton, C., & Wynne, B. (2004). Knowledge and political order in the European Environment Agency. In S. Jasanoff (Ed.), States of knowledge: The co-production of science and social order (pp. 87–108). Routledge.
58. Wynne, B. (2010). Strange weather, again: Climate science as political art. Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2–3), 289–305.
59. Yaman, H. (2021). Post-truth çağda siyaset: Hakikat-sonrası siyasal iletişim ve propaganda. Kriter Yayınları.