We live in increasingly complex societies, and the average citizen can quickly feel overwhelmed by this complexity. Conversely, those who know, the technocrats, in the broad sense, may end up thinking that consulting the population for issues that are beyond them is undoubtedly counterproductive, as they are not in a position to know what is good for them. .
This revolt of those who know represents, casually, a serious danger for our democracies. Especially since even those for whom we vote find themselves excluded, very often, from the decision-making process, by this technostructure which governs what is called the Deep State. We are witnessing here the breakdown of the dialogue between those who know and the rest of the population.
A break that is particularly problematic when it affects the scientific world. Not only because it represents an anti-democratic drift, but because it harms the progress of science itself.
Of course, one immediately thinks of the rise of pseudoscientific discourse, fueled by distrust of “Big Pharma” and scientific institutions in general. This is the most obvious effect, but there are far more pernicious ones.
Georges Charpak, Nobel Prize in Physics, was not only a great physicist, but also a great popularizer. He did not see science popularization as being a necessary evil, in short, an exercise in communication making it possible to maintain public support for scientific research, which is essential for elected officials to continue to subsidize it, but as being core of the scientific process.
A famous scene from the gem of a film that is The fins of Mr. Schultz, in which he collaborated, illustrates it. It is by explaining the problem to their governess that they [Pierre et Marie Curie] encountered with the abnormally high radioactivity of pitchblende that they had the revelation that it might contain something other than uranium, an even more radioactive unknown element.
One thinks here of the famous aphorism of Nicolas Boileau: “What is conceived well is clearly stated, and the words to say it come easily. Except that it should be taken here in reverse: it is by seeking to put scientific concepts clearly into words that we conceive them more easily, and therefore, that we can better understand them ourselves.
The crisis of institutions is therefore, without doubt, above all a crisis of popularization. We must restore the dialogue between those who know and the rest of the population, which will not only benefit the population, but also those who know – but who may have forgotten that many heads are always better than a few. …