The political direction of scientific development

Wolfgang van den Daele

pp. 219-242

in: Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart, Richard Whitley (eds), The social production of scientific knowledge, Berlin, Springer, 1977

Abstract

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.