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Different Understanding of the World*
Olivier Godard, Ecole polytechnique, Paris.
 ould
we have a different understanding of the world should society
choose to work towards achieving sustainable development rather
than more classical goals, such as economic and social progress
or national independence? The answer is yes, as the sustainable
development project represents a challenge for the production
of knowledge (Jollivet, 2001): its principal aim is to integrate
knowledge into complex issues, whereas modern science has chosen
to break down its subjects in order to develop specialized knowledge
(Stengers, 1998).
For
sustainable development, it is necessary to invent complementary
forms of knowledge making it possible to understand elements in
complex interactions within a specific context. This is the approach
chosen today by the 'integrated models' in the field of climatology,
which link together economic and territorial trends, and physical
exchanges with the atmosphere, the oceans and the biomass (Dowlatabadi
and Morgan, 1993). These models are faced with the challenge of
organizing a shift from the semantics of social disciplines -
with moral values, intentions, preferences, uses, power struggles
and projects - to the semantics of natural science (energy flows,
the evolution of populations, physico-chemical cycles, and so
on). They also have to manage the uncertainties inherent in each
form of knowledge and their future in this interdisciplinary movement:
are they cumulative or multiplicative? Do they cancel each other
out?
In
this context, we can distinguish three different levels of acknowledgement
of sustainable development by scientific research, each one implying
a greater degree of commitment by the research mechanism (Godard
and Hubert, 2002).
1)
The sustainable development project suggests new research topics
or changes the order of priorities, generating specific effort
in terms of organization (programmes, calls for tender, etc.).
Sustainable development thereby becomes a new consideration in
scientific policies, translated into a variety of specific questions
that are put to researchers in different disciplines.
2)
Sustainable development is, in itself, a new subject of research.
The study of this subject brings together specialists in social
science (lawyers, sociologists, political scientists, economists
and philosophers) and nature (climatologists and ecologists),
as well as interface specialists (geographers and agronomists),
modelization specialists and, finally, various technical engineers.
These studies examine the mechanisms for integrating development
processes, the social conditions for the creation of techniques
and directions for innovation, the organization of precautionary
policies and the long-term strain in relations between different
evolutions of social reality. It builds reference concepts, develops
methods and defines the corresponding measurements, such as indicators
of sustainable development. This new subject shakes up the boundaries
between disciplines and the divisions between fields of research,
and encourages thinking on connections and relationships.
3)
Sustainable development leads to a renewal of research practices.
Integrative research is set up and the partnership-style approach
adopted by research projects lends them more weight. Formulating
research questions, defining methods and discussing results is
no longer confined to the limited context of laboratories, but
opened up to the different actors concerned by sustainable development.
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74 - Social sciences and development