"The Force of Scientific Authority": Nima Bassiri in conversation with Amogh Sahu

Join critical theorist Nima Bassiri and philosopher Amogh Sahu for an exploration of the spectre of “anti-science” in the Western political imaginary and, concomitantly, how the humanistic categories of “critique” and “critical theory” have been increasingly perceived as complicit with, and as providing intellectual succour for, scientific scepticism and, as such, culpable not only with the erosion of scientific truth but with core tenets of liberal democracy itself.
As Bassiri argues, the virulence of anti-scientific conduct may not be cured through mechanisms of educative hygiene alone, for such behaviours are not opposed to, but actually intimately bound up with the nature of scientific authority and to the conduct-inciting truth regimes upon which that authority rests. An unquestioned moral-political investment in the inviolability of the value of truth may not actually stamp out the menace of anti-science, but serve instead to inflame it.

This event is part of a mini-series exploring questions relating to science, anti-science, and pseudoscience in our time. The series is supported by the Challenging Pseudoscience group at the Royal Institution in London with funding from the Open Society Foundations.

Nima Bassiri is a critical theorist, historian of the human sciences, and assistant professor at Duke University, where he teaches in the Program in Literature, Duke’s interdisciplinary humanities and cultural studies department. He is also co-director of Duke’s Institute for Critical Theory. His first book, Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value, will be published next year by Chicago University Press.
Website: https://www.nimabassiri.com
Public Writing: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/the-force-of-scientific-authority

Amogh Sahu is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Columbia University. He works on issues concerning the unity of theory and practice in ethics, meta-ethics, and social/political areas. He is currently writing a dissertation on the methodological foundations of critical theory, focused on a logical reconstruction of the work of Max Horkheimer.

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