The crisis of democracy is on the agenda. Not a day goes by without newspaper articles on the subject. With each coup, electoral fraud, or constitutional change in this or that country, new analyses emerge, books are published, podcasts are edited. And it’s a good thing that’s the case. Today, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and before that, Javier Milei in Argentina, the bizarre coup attempt in Bolivia, Ecuador’s inability to deal with organized crime, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, the omnipresence of Bolsonaro in our political scenario, and the possibility of a Trump comeback in the United States, or the threat of the far right in the French elections, or Brexit in the United Kingdom, or Viktor Orbán in Hungary, or the gangster Putin in Russia, etc. Democracy is already under threat all over the world.

However, the crisis of democracy is only the surface, or counterpart, of another, more fundamental crisis to which we pay almost no attention and without resolving which we will not be able to resolve the crisis of democracy itself: we are also witnessing the crisis of knowledge, or more precisely, of the sciences.

If the political crisis calls into question the way we organize life in society, the crisis of knowledge calls into question the way we understand the way we produce knowledge and the ways in which this knowledge also helps to organize our collective life.

It has become commonplace to say that democracy is in crisis because its promises of greater equality have not been fulfilled. The increasing concentration of income and inequality within countries, and the persistence of poverty and corruption, raise questions about the effectiveness of our political system.

It would not be wrong, in this sense, to say that science is also in crisis because of its broken promises. Flat Earth, anti-vaccine movements, and climate denial are just the most extreme aspects of these upheavals that are shaking our trust in scientific knowledge. But what are the broken promises of science?

Perhaps it would be more accurate for her to talk not about promises, a term that refers to a desired future place, but about “unfulfilled guarantees.”

Modern science, which is essential to our world, is based on three basic guarantees: facts, impartiality of method, and its contribution to progress.

In short, it tells us that there is a nature that precedes humanity and is independent of it. This nature is subject to its own laws, to which the scientific method gives privileged access. Based on this access, science extracts objective and universal truths that constitute the essence of reality. We may, in this sense, not yet understand the essence of some natural laws and truths, but they are there. We ourselves, as a human race, are the product of these truths, and we have no power to change them, and it is only a matter of time before science understands them more precisely, allowing us to manipulate nature in an increasingly sophisticated way.

Since facts are independent of culture or of what is particular to man, science is neutral. The facts it reveals are not influenced by subjective points of view. Because of this neutrality, science cannot be held responsible for the results of the knowledge it produces. Technology and its effects on reality are the result of scientific knowledge, but the way we evaluate its effects should not conflict with the choices of scientists who deal only with facts. It would be harmful if value judgments and issues such as social appropriateness or environmental impact began to determine the direction of research itself.

Knowledge must advance only in a way that cannot be contained and is limited only by the capacity of the available tools and the methods of scientists. If technology has side effects that are not always positive, this cannot be attributed to science, even though it is the main engine of what we call progress.

Progress, and science as a locomotive, must not stop either, because it is its progress that will bring solutions to the side effects it produces.

However, the shadow of environmental problems, which threaten the future of humanity itself, and the persistence and growth of social inequality, shows, in a way that can no longer be denied, that science is also part of the problem, and not exactly the source of the solutions that it insists on always postponing.

However, this does not mean that the problem lies only in the appropriation of science by economic interests. This is also true, but the issue is deeper. If we stick to this observation only, we risk believing that the problem is limited to the political sphere, and summing it up again in the crisis of political representation. The issue, in this sense, lies only in the deficiency of democracy itself, which would allow the corruption of the political system and the appropriation of science.

However, it turns out that the aforementioned collateral bearer that supports science itself as we understand it is prior to and an essential part of capitalism. As we have mentioned, this trilogy justifies and supports the idea of ​​knowledge over which ordinary people have no power, even though it produces very tangible effects on their lives, in relation to science that washes its hands of it – let the experts say so. The thousands of victims of the cesium-137 accident in Goiânia, in 1987, or the millions of people affected by asbestos around the world, or those contaminated by pesticides, or even the huge numbers of people suffering from obesity and diabetes resulting from an agri-food system based on standardization and ultra-processed products.

Conspiracy theories that lead to distrust of vaccines or rebellion against the restrictive measures imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic, climate denial or flat earth, are only the most extreme symptoms of a deep dissatisfaction and a real sense of helplessness in the face of the world. The failure of these guarantees, always illusory, offered by this specific idea of ​​scientific knowledge.

Does this mean putting Darwin on a par with religious creationism? Perhaps, yes, in a way, but the key is to realize that the ivory tower that led to the loss of trust in science is the real cause of its weakness, not a guarantee of its integrity—in the same way that the Berlin Tower was. And there was no guarantee if the problems were within socialism itself.

The wall has already fallen, like the one in Berlin. It is better to bring it down once and for all. All knowledge must be measured by the quality of the collective experience it provides. Science has nothing to lose by looking and being seen from the same level. We will all win.

(Make no mistake: I am a scientist and a science enthusiast. The ideas of Darwin, Einstein, and Freud are the most revolutionary things humanity has ever produced.)