Jaco (-128)

"He who is a legend in his own time is ruled by that legend. It may begin in absolute innocence but to cover up flaws and maintain the myth of Divine Power, one has to employ desperate measures." -Arthur Rimbaud

 "The more famous you are, the more fearful you get of falling off the pedestal, letting people down." -Marilyn Monroe


Foreword

THINK OF JACO A LOT TODAY, especially in my teaching of music. I come across students who play well and have good taste, who have good time and know the language-but somehow how it's not flying. I have a body of study devoted to students who fall into that category, egory, and I have a name for this syndrome: I call it "id lock." A lot of the problem is that the emotional center, the id, is locked for these people. They know music but they're not screaming it from their heart, as Jaco did. He did not suffer from id lock at all. His id was wide open. He was fearless. And fear is really the biggest enemy of creativity. I'll tell you a story about this cat. I used to live in upstate New York, and my house was in a valley between two mountain ranges. The woods dropped down to a stream that was fed by two waterfalls that came off the mountains. The approach to the stream sloped down about 15 feet to the water, and it was rocky all the way down. You could slip and trip on the rocks, so people would walk down there slowly and even use their hands to make sure they didn't fall. The stream itself was icy cold. In the springtime, after the snow melted, it could be up to your chest at the deepest part, but in other places it was only a foot or two deep, so you couldn't really swim in it. I took Jaco to this place. And when he got to the spot where he spied the stream, he just went nuts. "Oh, man! A mountain stream! I love this, man! This is the greatest!" He was standing at the edge, which was about 15 feet from the stream but not directly above it, because the ridge sloped away from the water. In one motion, he just ripped off all of his clothes and jumped off the ledge. He didn't know how deep the water was. The water was maybe three feet deep, Jaco was about 15 feet up-and and it was all rocks on the bottom. He was already in the air as I was yelling, "taco! Nooooooooooo!" And he was halfway down by the time I got "no" out. It flashed in my mind that in a split second I was going to see him die in front of me. And I felt all this sadness. But he made a miraculous lous move-as soon as his body hit the water, he kind of glided. He somehow managed to turn all of that downward energy into forward ward energy. And Jaco was big. But somehow he straightened out, and he came up laughing, screaming hysterically. I'd never seen anything like that. Nobody got into the stream that way; everybody would put in one toe and gradually sit down, trying not to trip on the rocks. But this guy was like Tarzan or Indiana Jones. It was like a movie stunt. I saw it, and I still don't believe it. Jaco was just fearless. His id was wide open, and he experienced life on that level on a daily basis. To me, he was just the highest cat to be around. -Bob Moses


PREFACE

 Jaco: Man and Myth "My name is John Francis Pastorius III and I'm the greatest electric bass player in the world." THE LIFE AND MUSIC of Jaco Pastorius are legendary. endary. A potent force in modern American music, he has been hailed as a genius and dismissed as a madman. Of course, there is a fine line between artistry and autism, as the eminent Swiss psychologist ogist Carl Gustav Jung once theorized-and in Jaco's case, the tightrope he walked was tenuous at best. Like his heroes Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix, and Jesus Christ, Jaco didn't make it to 40. Yet, in the relatively short time he spent on the planet, he totally revolutionized his instrument and left behind an incredibly rich body of work that will stand the test of time. In jazz schools and music conservatories all over the world, his name is spoken ken by students in the same reverential tones reserved for such gods as Bird and Mozart. As one aspiring bassist put it, "Jaco opened the door and we walked through." In New York, they still talk about his legendary gigs, his marathon hangs, his outrageous antics onstage and off. Stop in some night at the Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, Sweet Basil, the Lone Star-all showcase clubs where Jaco headlined in his heyday. Or drop in at any of the marginal joints he played during his dark years. Talk to the clubowner, the doorman, a bartender, or any of the regulars on the scene. Talk to musicians or their managers or the employees in record stores around town. Talk to jazz critics from the daily papers or correspondents from Down Beat, Musician, or Billboard. Talk to the homeless cats panhandling outside the clubs or hanging on the West Fourth Street basketball courts. Everybody, it seems, has a tale to tell. It's all become part of the ever-growing body of folklore that fuels the Jaco myth and goes hand-in-hand with his musical legacy. Jaco was to the electric bass what Paul Bunyan was to the lumber industry, what Muhammed Ali was to boxing. Like Babe Ruth and Jimi Hendrix, like Charlie Parker and John Belushi, he was a larger-than-life than-life figure who lived to excess and was worshipped by multitudes. tudes. Throughout the international music community, those two syllables-Jaco-still resound with authority, a testament to his musical genius and the power of his charisma. The rise and fall of Jaco Pastorius, the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Bass Player," is not just a tragic tale of genius gone awry. It is also an indictment of a callous, uncaring industry that often turns its back on those who helped to build it. It is an indictment of a musicians' union that buries its head in the sand, ignoring its own. And it is an indictment of a political system that offers no safety net of health care for those who need it most. Jaco rode fame like a skyrocket to oblivion. His rise to the top with Weather Report, the premier fusion band of the '70s, was followed by a tragic fall from grace in the mid-'80s that left him spiritually broken, physically beaten, homeless, penniless, and hopelessly out of touch with reality. In the end, his bizarre behavior on the streets of Greenwich Village and Fort Lauderdale was a cry for help, an expression of his inner torment. He was raging out of control, and there was no support system, no network of agencies that could counsel him or offer aid. Even his own family and friends were powerless erless to change Jaco's perception of his condition or the world around him. "He had people in awe of him trying to help," said Bobby Colomby, the drummer and A&R man who "discovered" Jaco and produced his stunning self-titled debut album in 1976. "But something thing in his psyche, something inside of him, wouldn't let him be happy. This man was suffering from a mental illness, and his refusal to be helped was just another manifestation of that illness. We do not have a system in this country that deals with this very well. Unfortunately, in our society, if a guy sneezes or coughs, he's got a cold and we all feel bad for him. We relate to it. If a guy has a tumor, we sympathize. But if a guy has a mental illness, he's a'nut case.' We don't respond well to that. We don't fully understand that it's an illness. ness. And that leads to tragic results." 0 v 00 O In the end, "The World's Greatest Bass Player" began to express a macabre death wish. He'd drink himself into a stupor and fall asleep on the railroad tracks. He'd walk into a bar and pick a fight with the largest, meanest-looking dude in the joint, and then stand at attention tion with his arms at his side and let the guy wail on him. It was as if he were searching for his own executioner. And eventually he found him in the person of a 25-year-old nightclub bouncer trained in the martial arts, a brute who had no idea who Jaco was, what he had created in his lifetime, or what his music meant to thousands of fans all over the world. By the summer of 1986, Jaco had burned nearly all of his bridges. Plagued by wild mood swings and the emotional difficulties brought on by manic depression, a condition only exacerbated by alcohol, he drove fellow musicians from his inner circle. They simply found it too exhausting and heartbreaking to hang with him. Word of Jaco's erratic and unpredictable behavior on the streets reached the industry's movers and shakers, who came to regard him as poison. And nothing, it seemed, could slow Jaco's downward spiral. As drummer Peter Erskine so harshly but accurately put it, "It's tough when a guy sets out to join the ranks of the jazz legends who completely pletely fucked up their lives." Once a giant in the industry and the talk of the jazz world, Jaco had been reduced to persona non grata, a bum panhandling on the streets of New York City for beer money. Banned from most of the nightclubs around town-just as Charlie Parker and Bud Powell had been in the twilight of their careers-he often pawned his bass. His closest companions were the hustlers and street types who congregated gated at the West Fourth Street basketball courts and in Washington Square Park. He seemed to have what Graham Greene once called a "Cophetua complex": an emotional need for low-class people. For every old friend who offered Jaco a helping hand to lift him out of his doldrums, there was one who turned his back on him. Some would sidestep him when they spied him disheveled and red-eyed, eyed, begging for money on the street. Others would simply avoid eye contact in the cold-blooded manner that has become second nature to New Yorkers. As one colleague admitted, "It was just too painful to have to stare that shit in the face. And besides, I'd done my share of baby-sitting." What caused this deterioration? How could a brilliant artist, a loving father, a loyal friend, a spiritual person, turn into such a deranged denizen of the streets? The long answer is as complex as the human brain itself.. The short answer is simple: drugs, alcohol, and fast living-the same catalysts that hastened the deaths of such other geniuses as Charlie Parker, Charlie Christian, Jimi Hendrix, and Billie Holiday.

But dig beneath the surface, get beyond the stereotypes, and you'll discover a myriad of reasons for Jaco's downfall: unresolved anger about his parents' early breakup, guilt about his own failed marriages, riages, and the sadness of being estranged from his children-all coupled with an innate need to pay penance for those "sins." He also felt the constant pressure of maintaining his self-declared status as "The World's Greatest Bassist" and had a deep-seated fear of running out of new ideas. He harbored a lot of inner rage toward the hordes of "Jaco clones" who latched onto his technique, copped his personal voice, and got gigs at a time when record-company executives tives and clubowners were turning their backs on him. (But as Jaco would say, with a tone of righteous indignation, "I know what I invented.") He had problems with alcohol and cocaine, but the heaviest cross to bear was his illness, a manic-depressive condition coupled with a chemical imbalance in his brain that caused him to involuntarily flare up and lose control. It was probably inevitable that Jaco would meet a violent end. Those close to him had seen the signs for years. They had witnessed his gradual decline from the glory days with Weather Report to a sad state of homelessness on the streets of New York. They had seen him panhandling, sleeping on park benches, stalking around the streets of Greenwich Village dazed and confused, muttering incoherently and confronting pedestrians with bizarre, provocative behavior. Those who didn't witness it first-hand heard all the unsettling gossip through the grapevine. Every week there was some new horror ror story, some tale of Jaco showing up drunk for a gig with warpaint on his face or mud splattered across his body, falling off a balcony in Italy, riding naked through Tokyo on a motorcycle, hurling his bass into the sea, trashing a stage, getting his teeth knocked out in some ugly barroom brawl. And the whispering spread like wildfire from one musical community to the next, helping to fuel the Jaco myth. "Unfortunately, whenever you heard about Jaco, it was always in connection to some bizarre thing he had done," says Victor Bailey, the bassist who replaced Pastorius in the Weather Report lineup in 1982. "And it seemed like people just delighted in telling these Jaco stories. They would come up to you with big smiles on their faces and say, `Did you hear what Jaco did?' But I think those people were ignoring the fact that he was sick and needed help." w v-. 41 E 0 z 00 all 9 Drummer Brian Melvin lived with Jaco for four months at the end of 1986, a particularly dark period in Jaco's life. "Everyone was saying ing that Jaco was crazy," remembers Melvin. "They would talk about how he shaved his eyebrows and walked naked down the street, how he did this and that. His reputation was that he was capable of doing anything at any time. That became the norm for Jaco. The people around him helped to create this reputation through all their gossip, but I think he perpetuated it himself. After a while, he had this `bad boy of jazz' image that he had to live up to." Guitarist Pat Metheny believes that Jaco ultimately got caught up in his own myth. At one point during my 1984 interview with Metheny, we found ourselves trading Jaco gossip. Suddenly, Pat stopped the conversation and said, "See, this is exactly what Jaco loves. He gets off on the idea that people are sitting around talking about him all the time. And that's part of his problem." Many fans outside of New York were naively unaware of Jaco's painful final years. And when the sad details finally became known, they could only shake their heads in disbelief and wonder: "How could this terrible thing have happened to someone so gifted, so famous?" How indeed. In 1978, at the age of 27, Jaco was sitting on top of the world, riding the crest of his international notoriety. As Peter Erskine put it, "At one point, he was like the biggest thing in the music business, like the Michael Jackson of jazz or something. He made such an incredible impression. For a creative instrumental musician to have that kind of impact is really unheard of. Here was someone who had what seemed to be the most unbelievable potential. tial. He really had the world by the tail." With his large hands, long fingers, and double-jointed thumbs, Jaco seemed to be born to play the bass guitar. In his prime, he had the speed and dexterity to create solos that matched the explosive genius of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. His revolutionary approach to the instrument-playing melodies, chords, harmonics, and percussive effects all at once-was wholly unprecedented. And his theatrical stage presence-doing flips off his amplifier, throwing his bass up in the air and then whipping it savagely with his strap-was was a direct nod to the rock performance ethic. For me and for thousands of other fans around the world, Jaco was a beacon, an educator, a great unifier who single-handedly bridged the gaps between R&B, rock, jazz, classical, and Caribbean music. He was the personification of fusion music, turning on rock crowds to new music by providing the links between Bird's blazing bebop ("Donna Lee"), Duke Ellington's classic jazz elegance ("Sophisticated Lady"), John Coltrane's explorations ("Giant Steps"), and Johann Sebastian Bach's contrapuntal brilliance ("Chromatic Fantasy"), while blending in Jimi Hendrix's cathartic feedback squalls ("Purple Haze," "Third Stone from the Sun"), James Brown's infectious good-foot foot grooves ("The Chicken"), Bob Marley's reggae lilt ("I Shot the Sheriff"), and the Beatles' harmonically sophisticated pop ("Blackbird," bird," "Dear Prudence"). No one before Jaco had transcended so many idioms. No one had so expertly woven together the essence of those disparate worlds into such a seamless package. And he presented it with a demeanor that was decidedly punk-an unprecedented stance in the jazz world. He even named one of his songs "Punk jazz," an apt description tion of his music. As he told Damon Roerich in a 1980 Musician interview: "I'm a punk from Florida, a street kid. In the streets where I come from, a punk is someone who's a wiseguy. And I'm sort of a wiseguy, inasmuch as I don't give a shit!" In that interview, Jaco went on to say: "Punk is not a bad word. It's sort of someone you respect because he's got enough balls to stick up for himself. It has nothing to do with the punk music movement that's coming out of England now, where people are sticking needles through their noses. I've been calling my music Punk jazz for ten years, since long before this English music came along." (Ironically, fellow bass innovator Stanley Clarke once referred to Jaco as the "Sid Vicious of jazz," a reference to the doomed bassist of the Sex Pistols, the band that spearheaded the punk movement in the U.K.) As Jaco rocketed into the consciousness of the international music community, he quickly attained a larger-than-life status. Stories of him walking up to the likes of Ron Carter and Rufus Reid and introducing ducing himself as "The World's Greatest Bass Player" are the stuff that legends are made of. In a relatively short period of time, Jaco had gone from complete obscurity as a self-described Florida beach bum to worldwide renown, winning critics' polls in Italy, Germany, France, Japan, and the United States. Full of a gunslinger's swagger, he was always quick to point out that "it ain't braggin' if you can back it up." And he could.

The brash, cocky manner in which he strutted around onstage, the way his energetic presence filled a room, the way he played his instrument with such force and invention-all of this fed the Jaco myth. As one fan said, "I always thought of Jaco as being invincible, as someone who could bounce back from anything. That's why, when I heard he was in a coma, I just figured he would pull out of it and go back to being Jaco again." But what did it mean to be Jaco? Was it merely a persona he created, ated, a role he assumed like some theatrical professional wrestler stepping into the ring? Where did John Francis Pastorius III end and Jaco begin? And, one could ask, would he still be alive today if he had been content to be simply John Francis Pastorius III rather than Jaco? "Maybe he couldn't deal with the pressure of having to be Jaco every day, of having to take the next step musically," speculates Peter Erskine. "There was always the question of 'What's Jaco going to do next?' and all the pressure that went along with that. To me, that's what destroyed him." Drummer Ricky Sebastian offers another take on that theory. "One day I saw him lying on the sidewalk and said, 'What are you doing, man? Get up from there.' And he said, 'No, it's all over, man. I'm never gonna top what I've done already. I'm just living on my past.' In hindsight, I really understand what he was saying. I mean, can you imagine the pressure? Fame is something you dream of for so long and work so hard to attain, and then all of a sudden- boom!-you get it, and everybody is talking about you and you're winning all the polls and stuff. For that not to go to your head takes a really strong personality, and Jaco had a big ego to begin with. So you can imagine the effect all the sudden fame had on him." In his glory years, Jaco had tribes of followers in cities all over the world. All he had to do was step off the plane-they were always waiting for him, like disciples waiting to touch the hem of His garment. ment. But what lay beneath the myth was a complex, tormented individual. vidual. Jaco was an utter enigma, easily misunderstood and often maligned by those who observed his unpredictable behavior from a safe distance. As one friend sadly commented, "I wish people would have had more sympathy and compassion for him. I mean, the cat suffered toward the end. They called him crazy, but they didn't have to walk in his shoes. Some people never got a chance to see the real person, before he became the sideshow that was `Jaco.' A lot of people ple saw only the asshole-the rude, obnoxious person they'd rather forget. It's a shame, because he really was a good guy and a loyal friend." Like a lot of people, I still harbor mixed feelings about Jaco's passing. ing. Sadness for the torment he endured. Anger for leaving us. I grieve over the talent wasted, the promise unfulfilled. If he were alive and healthy and living a productive life right now, what kind of music would Jaco be creating? Would Jaco, who was acutely attuned to the concept of groove, be turned on by the current fusion of jazz and hip-hop? Jaco loved funky James Brown tunes, often pointing to saxophonist Maceo Parker's early work on All the King :s Men as "the real deal." Those same grooving bass lines and funk rhythms are the basis (via sampling) for much of contemporary hip-hop hop music. Might Jaco be collaborating with Public Enemy or A Tribe Called Quest today? Or would he have gotten into some new conceptual cross-fertilization of hip-hop and jazz on his own, something thing like the direction that such young jazz composers as Steve Coleman and Greg Osby have taken? Or would he have put his bass aside to concentrate on orchestral works? We'll never know. We've lost our chance to discover what he might have achieved as an artist. And those of us who knew Jaco also feel the loss on a more personal level. We miss the wise-cracking prankster who seemed to embrace life with such a passion, enriching ing our lives in the process. Jaco once confided, "I'm not a star. I'll never be a Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley or Ray Charles." Then-in a rare, revealing moment-he he added, "I'm really not even Jaco." Peter Erskine seemed to pick up on that sentiment when he said to me in a 1986 interview, while Jaco was confined to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital, "I just hope he does whatever it takes for him to come back and be happy and use that beautiful mind of his to make music again. And he doesn't even have to be Jaco again, as far as I'm concerned. He doesn't need to be anything but himself, which is John Francis Pastorius torius III, a pretty remarkable human being and a great guy." When word of Jaco's demise came down, those in the know back in New York sighed a deep sigh for the inevitable. Perhaps guitarist Hiram Bullock expressed it for everyone when he said, "I'm shocked, but I'm not surprised." "The World's Greatest Bass Player" slipped off to that big jam session sion in the sky on September 21, 1987-ten weeks short of his 36th birthday. John Francis Pastorius III is gone, but his spirit prevails. It's in the music. Just listen.

Bill Milkowski. Jaco: The Extraordinary Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius (Posición en Kindle129-160). Edición de Kindle.

Marc teòric de les controvèrsies científiques: el cas de la sacarina; Valverdu, 2002, UAB

"Algunes substàncies són cancerígens (causen càncer) o
teratògens (causen defectes de naixement). Un litògen, per
contrast, atrau litigis "
Kenneth (1999), pàg. 28

"Les bones ciències, com Déu, el patriotisme i la bandera, són
Dispositius retòrics dissenyats per ser impossibles
discuteixen contra: dispositius que sovint s'utilitzen en absència de
un bon cas sobre els mèrits "
Epstein (1996), pàg. 256.

"-De acord- vaig dir. Va tossir i es va sonar el nas-. però
ara mateix -vaig continuar-, quan em sento parlar
d'aquesta manera, tot això de Freud em sembla ..., no sé,
una completa tonteria.

-És pura xerrameca. Pitjor encara: és abusiu. fa que
teus pacients s'allunyin de tu.

-Però Zoe ha tornat. I la teoria encaixa
perfectament.

-Per això és una merda: perquè encaixa. els éssers
humans són tan enormement complexos que
qualsevol teoria encaixa. Però, a l'encaixar, la teoria
exclou seva complexitat, de manera que et fa
perdre el 'humà' que hi ha en ells. Les teories que
encaixen exclouen altres teories, i per tant no
serveixen. Com les religions que exclouen altres
religions, que prediquen la pau, que condueixen a la
guerra. El que encaixa no serveix. I el que encaixa
perfectament és el que menys serveix. "

Shem, Samuel (2000) Muntanya Misèria,
BCN: Cercle de Lectors, pàg. 417.

Pròleg

La necessitat d’escriure aquest treball es remunta al darrer any de la
carrera, quan vaig decidir-me a efectuar un anàlisi sobre la resolució dels
problemes epistèmics sorgits durant les controvèrsies científiques, emprant
com a cas d’estudi la sacarina. Aviat vaig comprovar que si bé les
controvèrsies constituï en un moment fascinant de la dinàmica científica, els
models d’anàlisi d’aquestes eren del tot insuficients i fragmentats. Ja tenia
davant meu, i sense proposar-m’ho, el tema de Tesi Doctoral: la creació d’un
model d’anàlisi de les controvèrsies científiques, que fos útil per a qualsevol
investigador de la ciència i que donés compte de les profundes
transformacions que han patit les disciplines científiques durant el ja extint
segle XX, i que es manifesten plenament en el recentment estrenat1 segle XXI.
El treball filosòfic s’havia de cimentar en un cas històric prou
documentat en profunditat com per a justificar les meves idees, de manera
que l’elecció del cas mundialment present de la sacarina, un edulcorant de
dubtoses propietats cancerígenes, era una opció prou interessant, i encara
més quan un dels únics fabricants europeus es troba situat a deu minuts del
meu despatx de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. D’altra banda, qui no
ha pres o no coneix algú que consumeixi sacarina? La quotidianitat de la
substància en la nostra societat significava un alicient més per a entendre com
una controvèrsia teòricament allunyada per qüestions d’espai i nivell d’anàlisi,
pot arribar a formar part del dia a dia de qualsevol persona del nostre entorn.
Sense anar més lluny, hom pot trobar sacarina en qualsevol bar o restaurant
de les nostres contrades, incloent-hi el del bar de la Facultat de Lletres de la
UAB. Vaig posar fil a l’agulla més espantat que cap altra cosa davant la
magnitud de les àrees en les que m’havia d’introduir, i aviat la meva base de
dades, ampliada a cop de fotocòpia rere fotocòpia per desenes de
biblioteques i centres de recerca, contenia les claus per a analitzar i
desenvolupar el model teòric inicial. La meva tasca, més propera a la d’un
detectiu que a la d’un filòsof, era al mateix temps estimulant i descoratjadora.
L’emoció de saber cada cop més sòlid el marc teòric de les meves idees a
mida que els documents anaven encaixant, contrastava amb la consciència
de l’abast documental al que m’enfrontava: un polèmica mundial requeria
un anàlisi mundial, i encara era més complicat quan considerava el lapse
temporal del meu estudi: des de finals del segle XIX fins els inicis del XXI. I cal
reconèixer que durant aquest període han succeï t moltes coses fonamentals
per a l’evolució de les nostres societats i de la ciència contemporània. Puc dir
que vaig anar sortint-me’n de tot plegat, encara que sempre amb el dubte
respecte la profunditat de l’anàlisi requerit per a cadascun dels aspectes que
tenia en ment, ja que un treball multidisciplinar requereix una bibliografia
multidisciplinar. Inesperadament, durant el complex anàlisi del cas, el cercle
semblà tancar -se quan realitzava part de la meva recerca a la Universitat de
Harvard, la primavera-estiu de l’any 2000. Mentre estava tot just començant
una petita excursió als parcs de Boston, vaig llegir astorat la portada del diari
de l’individu que seia davant meu al petit tramvia que ens duia a les afores de
la ciutat. El Boston Globe, amb la portada d’un color tan blau com el que
esclatava per les finestres del tramvia mentre anava renquejant damunt els
seus bastons metàl·lics per un maig plet òric, anunciava que el govern estava
considerant d’acceptar novament la sacarina dins les llistes de substàncies
segures per a ús comercial. A inicis de maig, el National Institute of
Environmental Health publicà el 'Ninth Report on Carcinogens' en el que
considerava la sacarina com a no-cancerígena, tornant-se a obrir la porta per
a una aprovació definitiva als Estats Units. Aparentment, semblava que assistís
a la fi d’una controvèrsia de mes d’un segle de duració, i que tot tornava a la
normalitat.
Res més allunyat de la realitat. Com veurem al llarg de la Tesi present,
aquest fet clausurava un dels múltiples aspectes que configurava la polèmica
al voltant de la sacarina, els quals em disposo a detallar en els propers
capítols d’aquesta tesi, una obra que m’ha posat a prova, i que hauria de
posar també a prova algunes de les idees de la comunitat a la que, amb tot
el respecte, m’adreço per primera vegada.

Introducció
La Tesi Doctoral que tens a les teves mans és el resultat del treball
realitzat durant un període de cinc anys, durant els quals he intentat trobar
algunes respostes a la multitud de problemes que conflueixen en l’anàlis i
filosòfic de la ciència.
Seguint una línia de recerca epistèmico-social que troba les seves arrels
en l’obra kuhniana i cristal·litza en els àmpliament denominats ‘estudis de
Ciència, Tecnologia i Societat’ (CTS), els quals sotmeto a revisió, la meva tesi
considera l’anàlisi de les controvèrsies científiques com un moment clau a
l’hora de comprendre el funcionament de la ciència i la seva dinàmica de
canvi. Les controvèrsies científiques són moments crítics habituals en el quefer
de les diverses ciències, en certa mida són la qüotidianitat en la ciència,
alhora que moments fràgils on els diversos nivells de decisió i participació
epistèmica poden ser dibuixats a partir de casos històrics reals. I és que la
recerca de models teòrics no pot partir de ments brillants però tancades al
procedir real de la ciència, a la seva història. I fins i tot en aquest cas, no
resulta una tasca agraï da ni senzilla la de desbrossar el paper de cadascun
dels participants en les controvèrsies.
La meva tesi pretén emprar un cas històric, el de la sacarina, que
engloba un lapse temporal extens, diverses localitzacions geogràfiques, i que
assisteix a l’aparició de nous fenòmens socials i tecnològics que modifiquen la
relació entre els diversos nivells d’interacció social. Les controvèrsies
científiques contemporànies i, en certa mida, les anteriors, estan fortament
influenciades per la societat civil (categoria que jo considero completament
imprescindible en els anàlisis CTS, i que ha estat àmpliament menyspreada per
una pretesa manca de paper epistèmic), la ciència industrial i els medis de
comunicació, àrees totes elles que incideixen en el disseny de la ciència
reguladora i la recerca científica que es pot denominar com a ‘bàsica’.
Així, tenim delimitats uns quants nivells en l'anàlisi de controvèrsies
científiques: la societat civil, la ciència industrial, la ciència reguladora (que
inclou la ciència bàsica) i els medis de comunicació. L'aportació de la societat
civil – que jo denominaré, dins un model global d'anàlisi de risc os, com a
‘exposició als riscos’- ha estat considerada com el d'una força important al
definir la tendència en el consum dels productes de la ciència industrial,
encara que no a nivell epistèmic, idea que si bé podia ser considerada vàlida
a inicis de segle per part dels positivistes lògics, ha trobat la seva refutació
durant el transcurs del segle XX. L’emergent concepte de classe, unit al canvi
de règims governamentals en la major part del món, l'aparició d'indústries
amb una forta inversió en recerca tecnològica i la creació i difusió universal
dels medis de comunicació (ara ja globals), han provocat que les relacions
entre la ciència, la tècnica i la societat hagin estat modificades radicalment.
Els interessos de la societat civil, més organitzada i informada que en qualsevol
altra època de la història, produeixen canvis epistèmics en la recerca
científica quan tenen suficient poder (econòmic - de producció, de consum-,
d’intenció de vot, de suport al poder existent) per a modificar l’evolució de la
recerca.
El model d’anàlisi CTS de controvèrsies que proposo té diverses utilitats,
essent la més important la de proporcionar un mapa conceptual que ajuda a
clarificar i delimitar el paper dels diversos agents que participen en una
controvèrsia científica, manifestant la societat civil, la ciència industrial i els
medis de comunicació un paper més important que en els anteriors models
d’anàlisi, la major part dels quals manifesten una particular tendència a la
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confusió dels nivells social i científic. Alhora, el meu estudi proposa una
atenció especial no tan a la clausura de les controvèrsies, com ha estat
habitual fins al moment, sinó a l’origen de les mateixes, moment en el qual es
poden advertir amb prou nitidesa els seus diversos nivells, i l’evolució gradual
d’aquests. Així doncs, les controvèrsies se’ns mostren com processos dinàmics
en els que existeixen diversos sub-nivells que poden considerar-se en molts
casos com a noves controvèrsies i que donaran pas a d’altres controvèrsies,
tan a nivell social com científic. De tot això se segueix que en un moment
determinat de l’anàlisi teòric ens trobem davant la necessitat de parlar de
‘camps de controvèrsies’, i no pas d’una única controvèrsia. Igualment,
aquesta afirmació ens porta a admetre que l’anàlisi hab itual de la clausura de
les controvèrsies científiques com a processos més o menys lineals no poden
ser mantingudes sota la nova evidència: la clausura de controvèrsies no és un
fet merament epistèmic ni d’única lectura. El canvi científic es produeix a
partir de l’existència de controvèrsies científiques abeurades en antigues
controvèrsies residuals, i en la inserció i desaparició contínua d’altres, essent
considerada habitualment una d’aquestes darreres com la fi de la polèmica.
La Tesi és un intent ambiciós d’aportació d’un model d’anàlisi i
comprensió de les controvèrsies científiques i del mateix fer de la ciència, que
es fonamenta en les dades d’un cas històric de gran riquesa i que és alhora
paradigmàtic d’altres possibles que es poden emprendre a pa rtir del model
inicial. Hauria estat una opció arriscada la de recórrer a diversos casos històrics
per tal de justificar el model teòric, ja que si bé aquest podria demostrar la
seva major aplicabilitat, perdria en capacitat de justificació dels seus principis.
Encara més, la concepció diacrònica i evolutiva (dels agents que participen
en una controvèrsia o, més aviat, en un camp de controvèrsies) intrínseca al
model que aporto no és una estructura tancada que hagi de respondre amb
precisió a qualsevol cas anterior o per venir, sinó que és més aviat una matriu
conceptual en la que la comprensió del que implica fer ciència i les seves
relacions amb d’altres nivells possibiliten i exigeixen l’obertura i creativitat dels
nous estudiosos de la Ciència, la Tecnologia i la Societat.
La Tesi consta de dues parts molt diferenciades, basades en una
proximació teòrica, en el primer cas, i d’una de descriptiva, en el segon, a més
d’un corol·lari final. El capítol 1 i 2 conformen el marc teòric des del qual
partirem per tal d’analitzar una controvèrsia científica que fa d’estudi de cas
il·lustratiu, el cas de la sacarina. Aquest primer apartat manté una estructura
conceptual en forma de cascada que comença per la consideració del
canvi científic, i passa pels estudis de Ciència, Tècnica i Societat, condueix al
paper espistèmic de les controvèrsies i acaba abocant al problema de l’anàlisi
de riscos. El primer capítol situa la Tesi dins el marc concret disciplinar CTS al
que pretén aportar nous elements. El capítol segon està dedicat a l’anàlisi de
riscos, en tant que activitat interdisciplinar que requereix d’una major precisió
en els seus anàlisis. Per això, he considerat necessari ampliar i delimitar alguns
dels conceptes necessaris per a dur a terme aquesta activitat teòrica.
Els capítols 3, 4 i 5 consisteixen en el desenvolupament descriptiu del
cas escollit, passant per la història de la sacarina (capítol 3), la descripció de
la metodologia científica emprada al llarg de la controvèrsia (capítol 4) i els
problemes tècnics i teòrics presents i originadors d’aquesta (capítol 5). En
aquesta tasca descriptiva existirien dos nivells més: un primer que analitza la
controvèrsia en tota la seva globalitat, i un segon que estudia únicament la
controvèrsia pròpia de la comunitat científica: biòlegs, matemàtics,
epiodemiòlegs, estadistes o metges. He cregut necessari indicar que ambdues
controvèrsies estan íntimament comunicades però també indico la necessitat
de reconèixer l’existència de nivells diversos en l’anàlisi de les contro vèrsies
científiques, essent el nucli més important la pròpia recerca científica. Degut a
l’ús de termes que no sempre són de la comprensió d’un lector habitual de
treballs d’aquest tipus he inclòs l’Annex 1, on es pot trobar un glossari dels
conceptes més tècnics de la descripció científica.
El darrer capítol, el sisè, és el corol·lari final, la reflexió general respecte
la validesa del model aportat a la llum de la descripció del cas. Al mateix
temps, em plantejo el paper de la filosofia de la ciència davant l’anàlisi de les
controvèrsies científiques i la presència cada cop més accentuada de la
societat civil en les controvèrsies científiques. Un marc ètico-operatiu s’obre
davant la tasca difícilment neutral de l’anàlisi de la ciència.
En darrer lloc acompanyen al cos central de la Tesi diversos apèndixs,
els quals contenen informació sobre aspectes colaterals de la historia de la
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sacarina o el risc que tal vegada no podien ser inclosos en el gruix narratiu de
la tesi al haver alentit excesivament la seva lectura però constitueixen una font
d’informació que calia tenir en compte. El primer Annex conté un glossari
tècnic, com ja he indicat anteriorment. El segon recull sense ànim exhaustiu
una munió de termes expressions i dibuixos entorn la sacarina, Durant el
transcurs d’una polèmica tan estesa històricament i social, ha donat temps a
l’aparició d’una imatgeria al voltant d’aquesta substància, la major part de les
vegades negativa. Expressions, textos i imatges sobre la sacarina estan
recollides en aquest apartat. L’Annex 3 conté textos sobre els riscos que no
podien ser inclosos en el discurs general de la tesi però que recolzen els
apartats de la percepció social dels riscos. Finalment, la bibliografia general
conclou el treball de Tesi Doctoral.

Mataró, 12 d’octubre de 1999 - 5 de març de 2002