Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 07 – 05
The twentieth century profoundly altered the relationship between scholarship, politics, and society. The unprecedented destructive capacity demonstrated during the two World Wars—culminating in genocide, strategic bombing, and nuclear weapons—led many intellectuals to question whether scientific and scholarly activity could be regarded as morally neutral. Organized knowledge increasingly came to be examined not only for its explanatory power but also for its social and political consequences.
In addressing this question, it is important not to reify knowledge itself. Sciences, philosophies, and academic disciplines do not act politically. Only individuals and organized communities act. Scientific theories neither construct concentration camps nor build hospitals; philosophical doctrines neither establish constitutions nor abolish them. Such actions are undertaken by persons acting within institutions that employ, interpret, develop, or misuse organized bodies of knowledge.
One influential response to the catastrophes of the twentieth century emphasized the dangers of scientific inquiry detached from historical, ethical, and social reflection. According to this view, the natural sciences, by concentrating upon technical efficiency while neglecting questions of value, risked becoming instruments of authoritarian political systems. The development of critical theory, the sociology of knowledge, and later science studies reflected, in different ways, this growing concern with the social and institutional context of scientific activity.
This interpretation, however, captures only part of the historical record. The political regimes of the twentieth century did not rely upon the natural sciences alone. Communities of scholars and professionals across virtually every discipline participated—sometimes actively, sometimes passively—in political projects. Totalitarian governments depended not only upon engineers and physicists but also upon jurists who redefined legality, historians who reconstructed national narratives, philosophers who justified political doctrines, economists who designed planning systems, educators who shaped ideological instruction, psychologists who developed techniques of persuasion, and social scientists who classified populations and informed administrative policy.
The relationship between knowledge and political power is therefore broader than the relationship between science and technology. Different scholarly communities contribute in different ways. The natural sciences often provide technological capabilities; the humanities and social sciences frequently provide conceptual frameworks, classifications, interpretations, legitimations, and administrative practices. None of these disciplines possesses moral immunity simply by virtue of its subject matter.
This observation suggests a broader methodological principle. The social situatedness of knowledge is not peculiar to empirical science but characterizes all organized forms of inquiry. Every scholarly community develops within historical institutions, educational traditions, professional norms, political environments, and cultural assumptions. Recognition of this fact should not undermine confidence in systematic inquiry. Rather, it underscores the continuing necessity of intellectual self-criticism and institutional accountability within every field of knowledge.
The central question is therefore not whether one discipline is inherently more dangerous than another, but how scholarly communities can preserve intellectual independence while remaining conscious of the social consequences of their work. The history of the twentieth century suggests that neither scientists nor philosophers, neither engineers nor historians, neither physicians nor jurists, can claim exemption from this responsibility.
Seen from this perspective, the traditional distinction between the “two cultures” of science and the humanities becomes less decisive than a more fundamental distinction: that between scholarly communities committed to open criticism, intellectual integrity, and continual self-correction, and those that subordinate inquiry to predetermined ideological, political, or institutional ends. The moral character of organized knowledge ultimately depends not upon the disciplines themselves, but upon the intellectual communities that cultivate and apply them.
Hossein Jorjani 