Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems

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Transaction Publishers - 449 páginas
Science is continually confronted by new and difficult social and ethical problems. Some of these problems have arisen from the transformation of the academic science of the prewar period into the industrialized science of the present. Traditional theories of science are now widely recognized as obsolete. In Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (originally published in 1971), Jerome R. Ravetz analyzes the work of science as the creation and investigation of problems. He demonstrates the role of choice and value judgment, and the inevitability of error, in scientific research. Ravetz's new introductory essay is a masterful statement of how our understanding of science has evolved over the last two decades.

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INTRODUCTION
1
THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE
7
WHAT IS SCIENCE?
11
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRIALIZED SCIENCE
31
THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
69
SCIENCE AS CRAFTSMANS WORK
75
SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY PROBLEM SOLVING ON ARTIFICIAL OBJECTS
109
METHODS
146
THE MANAGEMENT OF NOVELTY
260
QUALITY CONTROL IN SCIENCE
273
ETHICS IN SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY
289
SCIENCE IN THE MODERN WORLD
315
TECHNICAL PROBLEMS
321
PRACTICAL PROBLEMS
339
IMMATURE AND INEFFECTIVE FIELDS OF INQUIRY
364
CONCLUSION THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE
403

FACTS AND THEIR EVOLUTION
181
THE SPECIAL CHARACTER OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
209
SOCIAL ASPECTS OF SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY
241
THE PROTECTION OF PROPERTY
245
INDEX OF NAMES
437
INDEX OF TOPICS
443
GENERAL INDEX
446
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Página 354 - Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
Página 158 - Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts.
Página 66 - The mental grasp of this extrapersonal world within the frame of the given possibilities swam as highest aim half consciously and half unconsciously before my mind's eye. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights which they had achieved, were the friends which could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen...
Página 66 - ... from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking.
Página 18 - Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.; New York, 1897).
Página 63 - And this we do also ; we have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences, which we have discovered, shall be published, and which not : and take all an oath of secrecy, for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret : though some of those we do reveal sometimes to the state, and some not.
Página 32 - But nevertheless the year that Rutherford died there disappeared forever the happy days of free scientific work which gave us such delight in our youth. Science has lost her freedom. Science has become a productive force. She has become rich but she has become enslaved and part of her is veiled in secrecy. I do not know whether Rutherford would continue nowadays to joke and laugh as he used to do.
Página 158 - In the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits...

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