Wolfgang Krohn

Die Finalisierung der Wissenschaft

Abstract Contemporary science is characterized by a specific latitude for alternative developments. This means that science is open for external (economic, social, political) purposes to become the guide-lines of the development of theory. The transition to such a structure is here defined as „the finalization of science“. This notion must be distinguished from traditional forms of the „application“ of theoretical results. To explicate it, assumptions are developed relating to the structure and bearing of the self-regulatives operative in contemporary science. Three causes are suggested of the decline in the internal determination of the development of science: The achievement of a state of „theoretical maturity“ in fundamental disciplines (e.g., physics and chemistry); partial renunciation of the demand for causal explication and transition to functionalist sciences (e.g., psychology); the necessity of combining ecological approaches with the traditional analytical premises in different scientific disciplines. The perspective of the finalization of science embodies a growing coincidence of theoretical aims and social norms. Zusammenfassung Die Wissenschaft der Gegenwart ist durch einen spezifischen Alternativspielraum der Entwicklung gekennzeichnet: Sie ist offen dafür, daß externe (ökonomische, soziale, politische) Zwecke zum Entwicklungsleitfaden der Theorie werden. Der Übergang zu einer solchen Struktur wird als „Finalisierung der Wissenschaft“ definiert. Sie ist abzusetzen von traditionellen Formen der „Anwendung“ theoretischer Ergebnisse. Zu ihrer Erklärung werden Annahmen über Struktur und Reichweite der in der gegenwärtigen Wissenschaft geltenden Eigenregulative entwickelt. Drei Gründe werden für die Abnahme interner Determinierung der Wissenschaftsentwicklung gesehen: Das Erreichen eines Zustands „theoretischer Reife“ in grundlegenden Disziplinen (z. B. Physik und Chemie); der partielle Verzicht auf die Forderung kausaler Erklärung und der Übergang zu funktionalistischen Wissenschaften (z. B. Psychologie);die Notwendigkeit, ökologische Betrachtungsweisen mit den traditionellen Analyseansätzen der wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen zu verbinden. In der Perspektive der Finalisierung der Wissenschaft liegt eine zunehmende Koinzidenz von theoretischen Zwecken und sozialen Normen.

Finalization in science

The expansion of science Derek de Solla Price has calculated that the number of scientists is growing three times as fast as the world population has to an increasing degree become subject to limitations. The rise in the social investments necessary for continued scientific growth will increasingly provoke political resistance, especially as there is no dependable procedure at present for analysing the scientific results of increased outlays 1. The attempts to rationalize science policy by a systems approach to the determination of priorities and by the use of analytic methods have so far been futile. It is not clear what elements and processes in science can be consciously regulated, and by what means this could be accomplished, nor are there any procedures at hand to control or to evaluate the effects of the venture. Scientists themselves to an increasing degree tend to view the orientation of science towards economic, military and infrastructural goals as being problematic. On the one side this reflects their concern that this orientation may hinder or distort theoretical progress, on the other it reflects the insight that as long as the prevailing goal-orientations remain operative the demand for a socially relevant science must remain unfulfilled. It is our assumption that the self-examination called forth within science by the impact of these problems both reveals and promotes a fundamental

Society as experiment: sociological foundations for a self-experimental society:

Experiments are generally thought of as actions or operations undertaken to test a scientific hypothesis in settings detached from the rest of society. In this paper a different notion of experiment will be discussed. It is an understanding that has been developed in the classical tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology since the 1890s, but has so far remained unexplored. This sociological understanding of experiment does not model itself strictly on the natural sciences. Rather, it implies a process of societal self-experimentation without a fixed setting of a sociological experimenter. The paper discusses this notion of experiment in relation to the recursive dependency of the application and the production of sociological knowledge. It is contended that this concept of a self-experimental society offers theoretical insights that could well prove fruitful for a sociological concept of experiment beyond the realm of the laboratory.

The Genesis of The Concept of Physical Law

Investigation of physical laws is among the most important tasks of modern natural science. The naturalist observes recurrent associations of certain events or qualities. He is convinced that these regularities, observed in the past, will hold in the future as well, and he calls them “laws of nature”, especially if he has succeeded in expressing them by mathematical formulas. Knowledge of physical laws is of the greatest importance both to the theorist and to the engineer. Whoever knows a law of nature is able to predict and, consequently, to control events: without investigation of laws there is no modern technology. As Western civilization of the modern era is based materially on its technology, so it is distinguished spiritually from the cultures of all other periods and nations by making the investigation of natural laws the basic task of science. To primitive and oriental civilizations the concept of physical law is quite unknown. We shall see that it was virtually unknown to antiquity and the Middle Ages, and that it did not arise before the middle of the seventeenth century.

The ‘Scientification’ of Technology

In medieval times the construction of cathedrals was assigned to architectural workshops. For the organization and the techniques of construction the architects and craftsmen relied on traditional knowledge which was often kept secret by the rules of the guilds and which was only slightly modified with the acquisition of new knowledge. The construction of the largest cathedral of late medieval times, the cathedral of Milan, begun in 1386, raised unexpected problems of mathematics and statics (1). The recently acquired economic and political status of Milan called for the largest building of the period, but the city desired that the design did not follow northern European rules of construction. Within the Roman tradition of Lombardian aesthetics the northern Gothic style was considered too arching and the supporting system of pillars and flying butresses was felt to be confusing. Further, this style was determined by a well-established principle of construction which stipulated that the height of the church be equal to its width. The Milanese workshop, however, decided to work from an equilateral triangle as cross section. They hoped that the less arching elevation of this design would allow for the elimination of the confusing system of support, even if the size of the cathedral exceeded the Gothic constructions.

Commentary: Nuclear Power as a Social Experiment—European Political “Fall Out” from the Chernobyl Meltdown

Society has become an experimentation field for complex technologies. Nuclear power plants are being sold as well-developed products by industry, they are legitimated as necessary for the future provision of energy by political agencies, and scientifically they are supported by seemingly objective and neutral safety studies and risk assessments. But none of the 300 existing nuclear power plants are identical and their safety cannot be tested under real extreme conditions: That is the nature of this technology. Thus, the actual safety of nuclear power plants in normal operation and the manageability of an accident remain specula-

Science as an agent of change: finalization and experimental implementation

This article proposes that goal-oriented sciences contribute not only theory-based knowledge but also strategies of research to processes of social and technological innovation. The finalization model focused on disciplinary programmes, we focus on networks of innovation in which scientists become agents of change. Their role implies taking a variety of political, economic, legal and moral considerations into account, and their activities not only are addressed to problem solution but also generate new risks and public concerns. Still, science does not merge with political choice, economic interest or moral values in a seamless web. The article presents a systems theoretical restitution of the “internal-external” distinction in sociological terms. On this conceptual basis two case studies are presented - the development of waste management technologies and the introduction of genetically modified plants in agriculture - which illustrate both the diversity and the specificity of the functions of science as an agent of change.

The Political Direction of Scientific Development

The question of whether processes of scientific development can be socially directed has been discussed for several decades with no convincing conclusions emerging. The controversies have produced, however, several conceptual distinctions which form a vocabulary for the analysts of science. Distinctions are often, for instance, made between: pure research and applied research; the autonomy of academic research and the heteronomy of industrial or governmental science; the internalist orientation of scientists concerned with the study of nature and the externalist orientation related to its regulation and domination, i.e. oriented to technology. These distinctions, although conceptually not sharp, are based on contrasting cases in the history of science such as, e.g., quantum mechanics, cancer research and agricultural chemistry.

Learning from Case Studies

The question of how transdisciplinary research contributes to scientific knowledge cannot be answered without calling into question a broadly accepted view of the nature of scientific knowledge. Transdisciplinary projects are mixtures of idiosyncratic and nomothetic knowledge structures and the strategies combine research, development, and implementation. The classification into four types of learning offers an analytical view without forcing the projects into epistemic boxes. Distinguishing different perspectives and models of collective learning lowers the burden of legitimising the ‘scientific value’ of case studies. This attempt to understand transdisciplinary research from an epistemological point of view employs categories developed in the 19th century for defining the differences between the humanities and the natural sciences. Transdisciplinary projects are equally committed to the disciplinary knowledge bases of the natural sciences and technologies and to the value-laden themes of the humanities, but also to procedural methods of the social sciences.

The Origins of William Gilbert’s Scientific Method

William Gilbert’s De Magnete appeared in 1600, six years before Galileo’s first publication, five years before Bacon’s Advancement of Learning; it is the first printed book, written by an academically trained scholar and dealing with a topic of natural science, which is based almost entirely on actual observation and experiment. In the learned literature of the period, among the writing of both contemporary university-scholars and the humanistic literacy, it is an isolated case. An analysis of the origins of its scientific method, therefore, is not only interesting in itself but is likely to throw some light on the origins of modern natural science in general. The results of Gilbert’s investigation of magnetism and electricity being generally known, we shall consider first a few characteristics of his method and shall then try to trace its sources. Unfortunately very little is known of Gilbert’s life and nothing at all of his way of working. The investigation, therefore, must be based entirely on his two printed books.