SCIENCE, IMAGINATION AND VALUES IN THE GERMAN ENERGY TURN
AN EXAMPLE OF NEURATH’S METHODOLOGY FOR SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY
Keywords:
Logical empiricism, Economics and ecology, Philosophy of social science, Scientific imagination, Thought experiments, Science, technology and societyAbstract
Neurath’s scientific utopianism is the proposal that the social
sciences should engage in the elaboration, development, and comparison of
counterfactual scenarios, the ‘utopias’. Such scenarios can be understood as
centerpieces of scientific thought experiments, that is, in exercises of imagination
that not only promote conceptual revision, but also stimulate creativity to deal
with experienced problems, as utopias are efforts to imagine what the future
could look like. Moreover, utopian thought experiments can offer scientific
knowledge to inform political debates and decisions, contributing to the shaping
of society. This essay reconstructs a historical event as an example of Neurath’s
utopianist methodology. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a scientific and
political commission appointed by the Western German Parliament devised and
compared four scenarios for future energetic-economic policies. Conclusions of
the commission informed political decisions that put Western (later reunified)
Germany in a route towards becoming a green industrial power. A fundamental
part of the commission’s work involved an appeal to imagination, allowing for
the characterization under Neurath’s methodology.
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