Technology assessment (TA) is an important instrument for the regulation of innovation. From the perspective of sociology of knowledge, the regulatory process can be understood as a complex interplay between different forms of knowledge. The prevailing instruments of TA, expertise and participation, are both facing difficulties in dealing with the limits and impasses of regulatory knowledge in the realm of innovation. Nevertheless, as is argued in this article, reflexive forms of TA offer a good, if not the only, answer to (...) the question of how we can deal with the contradictions and paradoxes involved in the regulation of innovation. (shrink)

Participation of a broad variety of actors in decision-making processes has become an important issue in science and technology policy. Many authors claim the involvement of stakeholders and of the general public to be a core condition for legitimate and sustainable decision making. In the last decades, a wide spectrum of procedures has been developed to realize biotechnological citizenship. These procedures, composed of multiactor arenas, are either located in close relation to the system of politics, or, as in the case (...) of administrative decision making, more closely to the system of law. In the latter case, a problematic constellation arises. Here, law and science can build a technoscientific normativity that systematically excludes political discourse. The law, although intending to provide for political freedom and citizenship rights, at the end appears to be an ‘‘iron cage’’ for political communication. (shrink)

Der Produktionsfaktor Wissen produziert nicht nur Wissen, sondern zugleich auch Unwissen. Die Wissensgesellschaft ist auch eine Risikogesellschaft, in der die Normalität von Unfällen ebenso zu akzeptieren ist, wie das Fungieren der Gesellschaft als Labor neuer Technologien. Vor diesem Hintergrund der Gesellschaft als Wissensgesellschaft mit ihren beiden Seiten der Innovation und des Risikos ist die Frage zu sehen, wie die moderne Gesellschaft die ihr spezifische Problematik bearbeitet, mehr denn je von einem nicht auf seine positive Seite festlegbaren Wissen abhängig zu sein.

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 18 Heft: 1 Seiten: 281-318.

Manfred Rehbinder (Berlín 1935), asistente de Ernst E. Hirsch, se habilita en la Freie Universität Berlin, profesor en las Universidades de Bielefeld (1969-1973) y Zúrich (1973- 2003), y es —así lo señala por ejemplo Alfons Bora— uno de los precursores de la sociología jurídica de carácter empírico. Sin embargo, el texto que se presenta, y que fue publicado en los Anales en su número dedicado a la sociología del derecho (número 13, 1973), posee un carácter eminentemente teórico. Apoyándose (...) en el conocimiento del derecho positivo alemán, Manfred Rehbinder traza una serie de tendencias generales que resultan de gran utilidad para comprender los notables cambios que acaecían en aquel entonces y cuyos ecos resuenan en la actualidad: el síntoma novedoso se ha convertido hoy en lugar común. La racionalización del derecho, su homogeneización, el incremento de la materia, las estructuras jurídicas y el apoyo del derecho en paradigmas científicos son las líneas evolutivas a las que se presta atención en este trabajo. (shrink)

Technical Novel by Andrei Platonovich Platonov shows the process of organizing and constructing a technological utopia. Technological utopianism, according to Howard P. Segal, is defined as "the use of hardware and of knowledge to create and preserve an intendedly perfect society."1 Segal emphasizes that the extent to which technology shapes a society's values, institutions, techniques, and way of life is what distinguishes a technological society from previous societies. In Technical Novel, the main characters strive toward building an ideal society by (...) laying down basic... (shrink)

We consider the extension of a (strict) preference over a set to its power set. Elements of the power set are non-resolute outcomes. The final outcome is determined by an “(external) chooser” which is a resolute choice function. The individual whose preference is under consideration confronts a set of resolute choice functions which reflects the possible behaviors of the chooser. Every such set naturally induces an extension axiom (i.e., a rule that determines how an individual with a given preference over (...) alternatives is required to rank certain sets). Our model allows to revisit various extension axioms of the literature. Interestingly, the Gärdenfors (1976) and Kelly (1977) principles are singled-out as the only two extension axioms compatible with the non-resolute outcome interpretation. (shrink)

BackgroundStudies conducted in the health sector have determined a positive relationship between job satisfaction and work engagement. However, this paper reveals that this relationship turns into a negative or non-significant relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore the reasons for inconsistency in research findings in this critical period through a meta-analysis.MethodsThis study was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines and PICO framework. Online databases including Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, ProQuest, Google Scholar, and additional records from other databases were searched (...) without any time limitation, and all studies published in English that reported the correlation between work engagement and job satisfaction were included in the analysis. In total, 36 individual correlation coefficients were synthesized. R statistical language was used to analyze the data.ResultA total of 36 studies with a sample size of 16,087 were synthesized. The overall effect size was found as r = 0.57. While the moderating effect of national culture was not statistically significant, presence of COVID-19 as the significant moderator explained 37.08% of effect size heterogeneity. Such that the presence of COVID-19 has transformed the positive relationship between work engagement and job satisfaction into a negative but statistically non-significant relationship.ConclusionThis study empirically challenges the existing assumptions about the positive link between work engagement and job satisfaction. The results of the research can be a guide for managers and policymakers. Specifically, based on these results, different mechanisms can be put in place to support work engagement and, in turn, job satisfaction in the COVID-19 process. (shrink)

Betrifft die Handschrift Cod. 579 der Burgerbibliothek Bern.

It is necessary to consider medieval Western Neoplatonism as a current of thought inserted in a wide cultural atmosphere where liturgical, theological, aesthetic, and artistic patterns play an important role as elements of a common historical past. In this article the author argues to what extent Neoplatonic concepts (Epiphany, Negative Theology, Theology of Light and Metaphor of Light) derived from Johannes Scotus Eriugena, translator of the Corpus Areopagiticum into latin, relate to the Iconography of Crist-Light or Maiestas domini in a (...) mandorle of light. Writings of various thinkers, paintings from the 12th century and medieval epigraphy are taken as primary sources in order to understand the relationship between Neoplatonism and Iconography in the European Middle Ages. (shrink)

To discuss under this tide the early writings of authors, who a few years later would be numbered among the members of the exiled Institute for Social Research, is a kind of provocation. The political culture of the Weimar Republic was initially re-appraised in West Germany primarily in light of totalitarian theoretical principles. Later this picture changed to the extent that research abandoned the right-left equation. Should this progress, in view of a new wave of nostalgia, be undone? Can anything (...) other than a scandal result if one considers the fact that prominent representatives of the leftist intelligentsia — the jurist Fritz Neumann, the political scientist Otto Kirchheimer, and the philosopher Herbert Marcuse — had been students of even more well-known representatives of the academic right? (shrink)

It is necessary to consider medieval Western Neoplatonism as a current of thought inserted in a wide cultural atmosphere where liturgical, theological, aesthetic, and artistic patterns play an important role as elements of a common historical past. In this article the author argues to what extent Neoplatonic concepts (Epiphany, Negative Theology, Theology of Light and Metaphor of Light) derived from Johannes Scotus Eriugena, translator of the Corpus Areopagiticum into latin, relate to the Iconography of Crist-Light or Maiestas domini in a (...) mandorle of light. Writings of various thinkers, paintings from the 12th century and medieval epigraphy are taken as primary sources in order to understand the relationship between Neoplatonism and Iconography in the European Middle Ages. (shrink)

In diesem Buch geht es um den Beitrag, den die antike Rhetorik zum normativen Selbstverstandnis der Polis und zur politischen Ethik ihrer Zeit leistete. ANders als im neuzeitlichen Kontraktualismus gilt fur die antike Ethik die uberzeugende Rede als einzige Kraft, die bei besonnenem "Gebrauch" individuelles und kollektives Handeln auf gegenseitige Verstandigung einzustellen und durch die Begrundung einer rechtlichen Ordnung den Naturzustand roher Gewalt zu uberwinden vermag. IN Absetzung von der Sophistik profiliert sich die Rhetorik als Alternative insbesondere zur platonischen, jedoch (...) auch zur aristotelischen Philosophie. DEr Autor behandelt u.A. Die Polis-Ethik des Isokrates, ihre Vorformen bei Solon und Aischylos sowie ihre Parallele bei Xenophon. HErodot, Thukydides und Aristoteles verdeutlichen daruber hinaus Probleme ihrer "Implementierung" und zeigen, dass ihrer Wirkungsmoglichkeit durchaus auch Grenzen gesetzt sind. DAbei geht es um die sozialen Folgen von Gewalt und uberzeugungskraft, das Verhaltnis von Verfassungsordnung und AuSSenpolitik sowie die Herstellung von "Burgerfreundschaft " als Voraussetzung einer erfolgreichen Verbindung von Macht und Recht. DAnk ihrer Verzahnung von Individual- und Institutionenethik und ihrer Kritik an Versuchen, politische Verhaltnisse auf der Grundlage eines epistemisch begrundeten Gerechtigkeitswissens in der Orientierung an transpolitischen Normen zu gestalten, ist die rhetorisch fundierte Ethik fur ein modernes Verstandnis demokratischer Politik, die auf offentliche Rede und eine belastungsfahige Streitkultur angewiesen ist, von Bedeutung. (shrink)