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Tensions Between Science And Society

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Abstract

What are the “costs” of science besides its expected benefits? Specifically, how “tense” does the relation between science and society become in the light of the ever-increasing pressure of the latter on the former? In this paper I am going to discus the increasing global inequality deriving from phenomena such as the “brain drain” and from the problems relative to the relationship between ethics and science. I will conclude by considering the tension that arises out of the disciplinary structure of science and the non-disciplinary structure of the most pressing problems that society is faced with and has to react to.

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Notes

  1. http://go.worldbank.org/HBEGA0G2P0. Cited 26 June 2008.

  2. For a fuller list of push and pull factors causing brain drain see http://web.ncf.ca/cp129/factsandfigures.pdf, p. 3. Cited 26 June 2008.

  3. See for the following http://web.ncf.ca/cp129/factsandfigures.pdf with further sources. Cited 26 June 2008.

  4. Hoyningen-Huene et al. (1999). An electronic version of this document can be found at http://www.eolss.net/21st_a.aspx, http://www.eolss.net/21st_b.aspx and http://www.eolss.net/21st_c.aspx (cited on 5 Aug 2008). See also Hoyningen-Huene et al. (1998, p. 3). For the proceedings of the World Conference on Science which contain many more aspects of other tensions between science and society see Cetto (2000). This latter document is accessible on the Internet at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001207/120706e.pdf. Cited 5 Aug 2008.

  5. See http://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm. Cited 5 Aug 2008.

  6. I am neither saying nor implying that the European Commission is not aware of this problem: I have not the slightest idea who in the European Commission knows what and whose knowledge becomes operative in some program. I want to bring the problem to the public’s attention.

References

  • Cetto AM (ed) (2000) World conference on science. Science for the twenty-first century: a new commitment. UNESCO, Paris

  • Hoyningen-Huene P, Weber M, Oberheim E (1998) Editorial: towards a new social contract for science. Nat Resour: The UNESCO Q J Environ Nat Resour Res 34(4):3

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  • Hoyningen-Huene P, Weber M, Oberheim E (1999) Background document for the world conference on science: science for the twenty-first century: a new commitment, section 2.5. International Council for Science, Paris

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Correspondence to Paul Hoyningen-Huene.

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Hoyningen-Huene, P. Tensions Between Science And Society. Axiomathes 19, 417–424 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-009-9088-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-009-9088-x

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