‘Scientific advice to politics’, the ‘nature of expertise’, and the ‘relation between experts, policy makers, and the public’ are variations of a topic that currently attracts the attention of social scientists, philosophers of science as well as practitioners in the public sphere and the media. This renewed interest in a persistent theme is initiated by the call for a democratization of expertise that has become the order of the day in the legitimation of research funding. The new significance of ‘participation’ (...) and ‘accountability’ has motivated scholars to take a new look at the science – politics interface and to probe questions such as "What is new in the arrangement of scientific expertise and political decision-making?", "How can reliable knowledge be made useful for politics and society at large, and how can epistemically and ethically sound decisions be achieved without losing democratic legitimacy?", "How can the objective of democratization of expertise be achieved without compromising the quality and reliability of knowledge?" Scientific knowledge and the ‘experts’ that represent it no longer command the unquestioned authority and public trust that was once bestowed upon them, and yet, policy makers are more dependent on them than ever before. This collection of essays explores the relations between science and politics with the instruments of the social studies of science, thereby providing new insights into their re-alignment under a new régime of governance. (shrink)

not lie in the conceptual distinctions but in the perceived functions of metaphors and whether in the concrete case they are judged positive or negative. The ongoing debates reflect these concerns quite clearly~ namely that metaphors are judged on the basis of supposed dangers they pose and opportunities they offer. These are the criteria of evaluation that are obviously dependent on the context in which the transfer of meaning occurs. Our fundamental concern is indeed the transfer itself~ its prospects and (...) its limits. Looking at possible functions of metaphors is one approach to under standing and elucidating sentiments about them. The papers in this volume illustrate, by quite different examples, three basic functions of metaphors: illustrative, heuristic~ and constitutive. These functions rep resent different degrees of transfer of meaning. Metaphors are illustrative when they are used primarily as a literary device, to increase the power of conviction of an argument, for example. Although the difference between the illustrative and the heuristic function of metaphors is not great, it does exist: metaphors are used for heuristic purposes whenever "differences" of meaning are employed to open new perspectives and to gain new insights. In the case of "constitutive" metaphors they function to actually replace previous meanings by new ones. Sabine Maasen in her paper introduces the distinction between transfer and transforma tion. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe thesis of the paper is that there is no “abuse” of science as suggested by the legend of Galileo but only a mutual opportunism characterizing the relation between science and politics.Any scientific research depends on the accessibility of its subject matter, plus material resources. The absence of internal constraints, the hunger for novelty, translate into a powerful drive to secure both. The coupling between science and politics in our time is based on a mutual dependence: resources and accessibility (...) are exchanged for solutions to problems and legitimation.Scientific disciplines are highly sensitive to their environments with respect to the possibilities of extending their power of definition and of thereby obtaining resources. The ability of the sciences to expand their power of definition depends on the political “context of relevance.” The context, such as a socialist or fascist ideology, selects against certain sciences. But for a government to be able to favor one school at the expense of another there have to be competing factions within science, and their conflict has to be to some extent unresolved.Modern democratic systems differ from totalitarian ones insofar as their interest in science is ideologically vague and primarily economic in nature. This does not mean that the same mechanisms of mutual utilization do not operate. (shrink)

The interrelations of science and technology as an object of study seem to have drawn the attention of a number of disciplines: the history of both science and technology, sociology, economics and economic history, and even the philosophy of science. The question that comes to mind is whether the phenomenon itself is new or if advances in the disciplines involved account for this novel interest, or, in fact, if both are intercon nected. When the editors set out to plan this (...) volume, their more or less explicit conviction was that the relationship of science and technology did reveal a new configuration and that the disciplines concerned with 1tS analysis failed at least in part to deal with the change because of conceptual and methodological preconceptions. To say this does not imply a verdict on the insufficiency of one and the superiority of any other one disciplinary approach. Rather, the situation is much more complex. In economics, for example, the interest in the relationship between science and technology is deeply influenced by the theoretical problem of accounting for the factors of economic growth. The primary concern is with technology and the problem is whether the market induces technological advances or whether they induce new demands that explain the subsequent diffusion of new technologies. Science is generally considered to be an exogenous factor not directly subject to market forces and, therefore, appears to be of no interest. (shrink)

The ArgumentEugenics is the paradigmatic case of the conflict between biology and medicine over social influence. Commenting on as essay by Debora Kamrat–Lang(1995), the paper reconstructs the historical roots of eugenics as a form of preventive medicine. A comparision between the development of some crucial aspects of eugenics between Germany and the United States reveals that the prevalence of the value placed on the individual over hereditary health of a population ultimately determined the outcome of the conflict but collective concepts (...) may be revived by new biological knowledge. (shrink)