International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 63

International Journal on Criminology
Gaston Bachelard again: “Science is totally opposed to opinion, not just in
principle but equally in its need to come to full fruition. If it happens to justify
opinion on a particular point, it is for reasons other than those that are the basis of
opinion; opinion's right is therefore always to be wrong. Opinion thinks badly; it
does not think but instead translates needs into knowledge. By referring to objects
in terms of their use, it prevents itself from knowing them. Nothing can be founded
on opinion: we must start by destroying it. Opinion is the first obstacle that
has to be surmounted. It is not enough for example to rectify opinion on specific
points, so maintaining provisional common knowledge like some kind of provisional
morality. The scientific mind forbids us to have an opinion on questions we
do not understand and cannot formulate clearly. Before all else, we have to be able
to pose problems. And in scientific life, whatever people may say, problems do not
pose themselves. It is indeed having this sense of the problem that marks out the
true scientific mind. For a scientific mind, all knowledge is an answer to a question.
If there has been no question, there can be no scientific knowledge. Nothing
is self-evident. Nothing is given. Everything is constructed.” 7
PROGRESS TO CONSTRUCTION IN ASTANA AND GENEVA
The “Astana II” talks—which brought the military leaders of the rebellion
together with the Syrian authorities under the auspices of Moscow,
Tehran, and Ankara in the Kazakh capital on February 16, 2017—did not
of course achieve any definitive progress. However, this new meeting consolidated
the achievements of “Astana I” (January 26) in relation to three military issues:
consolidation of the ceasefire implemented following the liberation of Aleppo the
previous December; exchanging detainees for rebel-held hostages; and conditions
of amnesty for armed groups agreeing to hand in their weapons.
But the most lasting achievement of these two meetings resides less in their
immediate impact than in their working methods. The Russian diplomatic service
had the excellent idea of inviting Staffan de Mistura—the United Nations special
envoy for the Syrian crisis, who presides over the process in Geneva—and including
him fully in discussions. From his initial position as “invited observer,” the
senior United Nations diplomat was able to provide the full benefit of his experience
on the ground, and his extensive diplomatic skills, to play a very active, even
proactive role of mediation between the representatives of the armed rebellion and
the Syrian authorities.
Sergey Lavrov, head of the Russian diplomatic service, was thus able to
explain that the Astana talks did not compete with those of the United Nations,
but were rather convergent, even complementary, to those in Geneva. And if the
devil is always in the details, everyone noted that it was indeed at Astana that
7 Gaston Bachelard, The Formation of the Scientific Mind, trans. Mary McAllester Jones (Manchester:
Clinamen Press, 2002), 25.
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