Governance Of Science (Issues in Society) 1st edition by Fuller, . (1999) Paperback

by Steve Fuller

This text offers a fresh perspective on the governance of science from the standpoint of social and political theory. Science has often been seen as the only institution that embodies the elusive democratic ideal of the open society. Yet, science remains an elite activity that commands much more public trust than understanding, even through science has become increasingly entangled with larger political and economic issues. Fuller proceeds by rejecting liberal and communitarian ideologies of science, in favour of a republican approach centred on the right to the wrong. He shows how the recent scaling up of scientific activity has undermine the republican ideal. The centrepiece of the book, a social history of the struggle to render the university a republic of science focuses on the potential challenges posed by multiculturalism and capitalism. Finally, drawing on the science policy of the US New Deal, Fuller proposes nothing short of a new social contract for secularizing science.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Steve Fuller graduated from Columbia University in History & Sociology before gaining an MPhil from Cambridge and PhD from Pittsburgh (1985), both in History and Philosophy of Science. He currently holds the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick.

He is the founder of the research program of social epistemology. It is the name of a quarterly journal he founded with Taylor & Francis in 1987, as well as the first of his more than twenty books. His most recent work has been concerned with the future of humanity, or 'Humanity 2.0'.