By the middle of the 19th century, the medical profession had more or less accepted the microbial theory of disease; learned to sterilize the surgical theater; learned to use drugs not only to lessen pain, but avoid shock; knew something of the circulatory system, and could control bleeding tolerably well during many operations; and so forth. Physician began to have an array of drugs that had some scientific verification, and by the First World War, there were an array of useful medical treatments, from innoculations to sulfa drugs. Still, medical science grew by leaps and bounds throughout the 20th century, and by the 21st century, is practically a different field from that of the old country doctor who delivered some babies, set some bones, and handed out aspirin.
In a lot of ways, we are still in the primitive stages of politics, international relations, and economics. The predictive capacity of experts in these fields is poor, and even more so is their ability to prescribe "treatment". We know some things (for example, that free trade is better than protectionism), but it is very general, and awaits much more work to be filled in. In that sense, it is inappropriate to talk about technocrats, since there is no substantial body of "technology" deriving from the social sciences.
The basis of political disagreement, rightly understood, is the large sphere of opinion, rather than knowledge, that guides many of our practical deliberations. Not all opinion is equally valid, equally well- informed or thought through, for example, but even the best opinions are still opinion insofar as there is room for intelligent disagreement.
Someone like John Le Carre is either a genius with knowledge well beyond that commonly recognized, or he is inappropriately berating those of us who support Bush as credulous neanderthals whose opinions are so far beneath his notice he need not make a cogent argument.
Of course, the next step after deciding that a substantial portion of mainstream opinion should be treated as "fringe" is to cease bothering with the niceties of political debate at all. If only that set of opinions embraced by the liberal intelligentsia is valid, perhaps we should surrender to technocracy after all, and forget this democracy stuff. O Brave New World!....... |
