The Public Consciousness of Risks: Second-Hand Non Experience
For the cultural criticism of science, the converse applies that one must finally appeal to what one argues against, scientific rationality. Sooner rather than later, one comes up against the law that so long as risks are not recognized scientifically, they do not exist – at least not legally, medically, technologically, or socially, and they are thus not prevented, treated or compensated for. No amount of collective moaning can change this, only science. Scientific judgment’s monopoly on truth therefore forces the victims themselves to make use of all the methods and means of scientific analysis in order to succeed with their claims. But they are also forced to modify the analysis immediately. The demystification of scientific rationality which they undertake therefore acquires a highly ambivalent meaning for the critics of industrialism.
On the one hand, the softening of scientific knowledge claims is necessary in order to gain space for their own viewpoints. They get to know the levers necessary to set the switches in scientific arguments, so that sometimes the train heads towards trivialization, other times towards taking risks seriously. On the other hand, as the uncertainties of scientific judgments grow, so does the gray area of unrecognized suspected risks. If it is impossible anyway to determine causal relationships finally and unambiguously, if science is only a disguised mistake in abeyance, if ‘anything goes’, then where does anyone derive the right to believe only in certain risks? It is this very crisis of scientific authority which can favor