Postwahrheit und wissenschaftliche Autorität

Abstract Post-truth refers to a social situation in which trust in clear and solid knowledge has been shaken, even though the ‘demand’ or ‘need’ for such solid knowledge has not diminished. This contradictory situation is particularly evident in the way in which science appears in public: on the one hand, expertise is transformed into a set of opinions that can be shared or not shared, as political decision-making seeks to legitimise itself more and more through ‘experts’. On the other hand, in times of crisis or rapid social change in general, the call for the replacement of politics by science grows louder: to bring the pandemic under control, virologists are supposed to say what measures should be taken to restrict individual freedoms. Such scientification of politics ultimately affects both fields, so that the fact that politics and science follow different functional principles is no longer recognised on either side: ‘evidence-based’ politics forgets that the political field is about balancing interests and setting values. In our article, however, we ask about the connection of this paradoxical situation with ‘the’ scientific practice itself: to what extent has science itself contributed to this strangely contradictory social role of its production of knowledge? And how does it seek to address the crisis of post-truth?