Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Schäfer, Wolf,

Titel

Finalization in science : the social orientation of scientific progress

Auflage

1st ed. 1983

Ort / Verlag

Dordrecht, the Netherlands : D. Reidel Publishing Company,

Erscheinungsjahr

[1983]

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.
• Authors’ Introduction -- I. Case Studies -- Summary of Contributions -- Agricultural Chemistry. The Origin and Structure of a Finalized Science -- Autonomization and Finalization: A Comparison of Fermentation Research and Fluid Mechanics -- Cancer Research. A Study of Praxis-Related Theoretical Developments in Chemistry, the Biosciences and Medicine -- II. Theoretical Considerations -- Summary of Contributions -- Finalization Revisited -- The Scientification of Technology -- Normative Finalization -- III. Prospects -- Summary of Contributions -- Science in a Crisis of Legitimation -- Towards a Social Science of Nature -- Introductory Note -- The Finalization Debate: A Reply to our Critics. With a Bibliography of the Finalization Discussion and Debate -- Bibliography of the Finalization Discussion and Debate -- I. The anti-finalization campaign and debate in the media -- III. Contributions to the academic finalization discussion and debate -- Notes on Authors -- Index of Names.
• These essays on Finalization in Science - The Social Orientation of Scientific Progress comprise a remarkable, problematic and controversial book. The authors propose a thesis about the social direction of scientific research which was the occasion of a lively and often bitter debate in Germany from 1976 to 1982. Their provocative thesis, briefly, is this: that modern science converges, historically, to the development of a number of 'closed theories', i. e. stable and relatively completed sciences, no longer to be improved by small changes but only by major changes in an entire theoretical structure. Further: that at such a stage of 'mature theory', the formerly viable norm of intra-scientific autonomy may appropriately be replaced by the social direction' of further scientific research (within such a 'mature' field) for socially relevant or, we may bluntly say, 'task-oriented' purposes. This is nothing less than a theory for the planning and social directing of science, under certain specific conditions. Understandably, it raised the sharp objections that such an approach would subordinate scientific inquiry as a free and untrammeled search for truth to the dictates of social relevance and dominant interests, even possibly to dictation and control for particularistic social and political interests.
• English
• Description based on print version record.