[dahfizz]

"Everything is political" is such a boring tautology.

Everything exists within the political climate of modern society. Institutions are forced to navigate the political landscape in which they exist.

But that does not make the institutions political in nature. There is absolutely nothing political about studying the mating patterns of beetles or the composition of rocks.

When people say that SA is being political, they mean that SA is using science to thinly veil their political activism. That's very different from your definition of "political"

[xpe]

The word “political” is rife with confusion. Careful discussion requires slowing down long enough to make sure different people are talking about the same thing.

One of my favorite definitions of politics is the set of non-violent ways of resolving disagreements, whether interpersonal, organizational, or governmental.

Others may reserve the word politics to only apply to governmental issues, campaigning, elections, coalition building, etc.

P.S. Language is our primary method of communication. Ponder this: why are people so bad at it? Do people really not understand that symbols can have different meanings? Do they forget? Do they want to get peeved because they want to think that other people don’t know what words mean?

[xpe]

> "Everything is political" is such a boring tautology.

1. The comment above didn’t say “Everything is political”.

2. "Everything is political" isn’t true. One might say that many things are influenced by politics; that’s fine, but downstream influence is neither pure single-factor causality nor equality.

3. "Everything is political" isn’t a tautology either.

Support for #2 and #3: There are things in the universe that existed prior to (and independent of) politics, like the Earth. There are phenomena influenced by politics but not inherently political, such as the phenomena of global warming or measuring the level of inflation. What to do about global warming or inflation is political, if you are lucky, meaning you have some persuasive influence at all (not the case in a dictatorship) and/or don’t have to resort to violence.

[dahfizz]

I believe you're nit-picking instead of interacting with the content of my comment.

OP did not literally say "Everything is political", they said "There are no apolitical institutions". Which is functionally the same thing. "Everything is political" is a common phrase used to express a common school of thought, [1] for example. I was interacting with this school of thought directly in my comment.

I agree with you that "Everything is political" is not true. But tpm is arguing the opposite.

"Everything is political" is a trivially true statement when using tpm's definition of "political", which is the point I was trying to get across. tpm is claiming that any institution which interacts with the government in any way is political in nature. This means that even the rocks and trees and oceans are political, because they are at the mercy of government policy.

I am arguing against this definition of "political".

[1] https://daily.jstor.org/paul-krugman-everything-is-political...

[InsideOutSanta]

"There is absolutely nothing political about studying the mating patterns of beetles"

It will be used as an example of how we are wasting tax money by politicians. It will be used as an example of how homosexuality is natural by one side, and then it will be used as an example of how science is used to "groom" children by the other. There will be fights about whether it should be in school books, and then some states will ban all school books that mention that research, and then publishers will be forced to remove it to still have enough of a market for their books. The authors will be called out on Twitter and receive death threats, their university will cut their funding to avoid the controversy, some students will complain about it, and then that will be used to show how universities indoctrinate our kids.

And so on.

That's what "everything is political" means. When people say things like "get politics out of x," they really mean "make x match my politics", because there's no such thing as "no politics."

[dahfizz]

The important distinction is that it is possible, and should be the expectation, that you can study beetles and publish the results without any sort of political motivation or bias.

In that sense, it is perfectly possible and reasonable to "take the politics" out of scientific research. Simply do the research and publish the results. There absolutely is a thing as "no politics".

Once the results are out in the world, politicians and pundits are going to talk about it. That doesn't make the science itself a political act.

[squigz]

> When people say that SA is being political, they mean that SA is using science to thinly veil their political activism. That's very different from your definition of "political"

Could you provide some examples? TFA seems to link to opinion pieces at Scientific American and not actual research, so I'm a little unclear.

[tpm]

> There is absolutely nothing political about studying the mating patterns of beetles or the composition of rocks.

Well, what about studying the mating patterns of humans, studying the decisions to abort, studying the decisions to change gender? Still not at all political in your country? Then, who decides if a study gets funding, who decides if it is ethical, who decides if the results can get published? It's all political decisions around the 'pure' science, which is why I mention different political regimes where stuff like this is often completely explicit unlike in more free societies where it may look like it's free of politics.

> they mean that SA is using science to thinly veil their political activism

And they should be glad, not complaining. Everyone is using their position for political activism, business owners, unions, all sorts of organisations, churches etc. There is no reason SA shouldn't do that. Of course they only complain because they don't agree with SA.

[dahfizz]

Scientific research is apolitical. Even the act of studying abortion or transgenderism is not inherently political.

Just because scientists have to occasionally interact with political institutions does not make Science itself a political institution. Science is fundamentally apolitical.