Amy Dahan

Transferring Formal and Mathematical Tools from War Management to Political, Technological, and Social Intervention (1940-1960)

In characterizing the 1940s and 1950s, historians of science and technology have often stressed the importance of the university-military-industrial complex. In this framework, science (and especially the physical sciences) has generally been considered as the producer of a (disciplinary) knowledge that was relevant to technology and led to the development of material devices (like lasers) or military instruments (the Bomb or radar). Scientific milieus were at the core of the great East-West conflict known as the Cold War, and the profound changes in their material and cultural conditions have been emphasized. The effects of this new alliance on knowledge itself (for example in theoretical physics) have been precisely documented, and the centrality of instrumentation and production of all types of material devices underscored. By insisting on hardware, technological systems, and military “gadgets”, these analyses have shown their great significance. No war, to be sure, is ever won by technology and science alone, but in the 1940s and 1950s they have played a role that can hardly be overstated’.

After Copenhagen, Revisiting Both the Scientific and Political Framings of the Climate Change Regime

The chapter discusses the political results of the Copenhagen Conference and the evolutions in the international climate arena including geopolitical shifts, new issues on the agenda, and a changing cartography of the main actors. As recent attacks on the climate regime concern both its political governance and the peculiar relationship between science and politics that developed through its main institutions (IPCC and the Conference of the Parties), the first part retraces the construction of the climate arena and the second part analyzes the framing of the problem among climate science, expertise, and politics. Drawing on this historical sketch, we suggest the years 2000 were characterized by a convergence of top-down approaches in climate expertise and policies, structuring action and discourse around quantified reduction targets, temperature and concentration thresholds, and carbon budgets. The bottom-up character of the voluntary reduction commitments in the Copenhagen Accord—confirmed at Cancun and Durban—is a serious setback to this approach. We conclude by discussing several contributions coming from social scientists to the post-Copenhagen debate. These well-known intellectual figures shift the focus from the links between science and politics toward the relationships between science and societies.