Is it possible to give scientific solutions to ‘grand’ challenges?

Poverty, climate change, ageing: When called to tackle a grand challenge, most of us seem to understand what the challenge is about. Further most would expect that science, especially interdisciplinary science, can help solve these challenges. In this paper I argue that grand, social challenges cannot be solved through scientific research. The problem is not only one of application: it is not only that we need science research and science results to be applied or taken up properly in target contexts. The problem is that science must already distort commonly identifiable, source problems, into scientifically solveable ones if it is to even hope to solve them scientifically. A key challenge then for tackling grand challenges scientifically is already the very conception of what the challenge is or can be. This account relies in part on Heidegger’s discussion of science as operating in a “Grundriss” or a groundplan (2002 [1938]) and on Otto Neurath’s discussion of “Balungen” (congestion or cluster concepts) (Cartwright et al. 1996, 188-202). Heidegger argues that science operates within already defined categories and metaphysics, and he pessimistically says that it cannot ever get out of its own mazes (of amazing creations) –on the other hand Neurath along with Weber and other philosophers of the social sciences find themselves at a loss with how to do science on thick social science concepts – concepts such as “wellbeing” or “inclusion” which they think cannot precisified as well as natural science concepts. Putting these two views against each other, I argue that seemingly everyday or non-scientific ideas of the social sciences need to get embedded or “founded” within scientific contexts in order to function as scientific concepts - founding processes are historical and social and possible to trace and study, scientifically (Efstathiou 2012). An implication of this account is that the same, seemingly common concept will need to get founded differently to get geared towards different scientific work. So expecting that scientific research on “grand” or otherwise “shared” challenges can grasp that common problem and offer answers to it is indeed logically flawed. Perhaps some supplementary historical, sociological or other science studies work can help design better solutions to shared problems, given it works to retain links to problems perceived as common. But even so, we might just be inherently limited as the sharpness and rigour of most scientific research approaches rely on developing specialized rearticulations of everyday phenomena. So what is to be done, to solve “grand” challenges? Perhaps supporting work that can help bridge scientific research with its context of social, political, organizational and other epistemiccultural applications can help better meet challenges that we perceive as shared, through particularized scientific handlings. Such interdisciplinary or integrative work should strive to connect with the actual practical contexts where solutions are to be sought and grander social milieux. Though this work may enrich and inform science, the work itself will only make a difference if it is not, or not only, scientific work. References Cartwright N., J. Cat, L. Fleck, and T.E. Uebel (1996). Otto Neurath: Philosophy between Science and Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Efstathiou S. (2012), “The Use of Race as a Variable in Biomedical Research: An account of founded race concepts”, Philosophy of Science 79(5), 701‐713. Heidegger M. (2002 [1938]), “The Age of the World Picture”, in Young J. and K. Haynes (eds. and trans.) Off the Beaten Track, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 57‐85.