Natural disasters remind us of the capricious power of Nature. This book questions the way that modern science and technology are represented as the means to liberate human beings from the arbitrary natural imposition of forces beyond our control. Modern science is implicated in a societal gamble on the construction of a technological society to replace the natural world with a supposedly better artificial one. The author questions the rationality of this societal gamble and its implications for our lives.

This provocative and critical work addresses the question of why scientific realists and positivists consider experimental physics to be a natural and empirical science. Taking insights from contemporary science studies, continental philosophy, and the history of physics, this book describes and analyzes the metaphysical presuppositions that underwrite the technological use of experimental apparatus and instruments to explore, model, and understand nature.

Taking insights from the philosophy of science and technology, theories of participatory democracy and Critical Theory, the author tackles and explores how democratic participation in scientific research and technological innovation could be possible, as a deliberative means of improving the rational basis for the development of modern society.