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These essays on Finalization in Science - The Social Orientation of Scientific Progress comprise a remarkable, problematic and controversial book. The authors propose a thesis about the social direction of scientific research which was the occasion of a lively and often bitter debate in Germany from 1976 to 1982. Their provocative thesis, briefly, is this: that modern science converges, historically, to the development of a number of 'closed theories', i. e. stable and relatively completed sciences, no longer to be improved by small changes but only by major changes in an entire theoretical structure. Further: that at such a stage of 'mature theory', the formerly viable norm of intra-scientific autonomy may appropriately be replaced by the social direction' of further scientific research (within such a 'mature' field) for socially relevant or, we may bluntly say, 'task-oriented' purposes. This is nothing less than a theory for the planning and social directing of science, under certain specific conditions. Understandably, it raised the sharp objections that such an approach would subordinate scientific inquiry as a free and untrammeled search for truth to the dictates of social relevance and dominant interests, even possibly to dictation and control for particularistic social and political interests.
List of contents
Authors' Introduction.- I. Case Studies.- Summary of Contributions.- Agricultural Chemistry. The Origin and Structure of a Finalized Science.- Autonomization and Finalization: A Comparison of Fermentation Research and Fluid Mechanics.- Cancer Research. A Study of Praxis-Related Theoretical Developments in Chemistry, the Biosciences and Medicine.- II. Theoretical Considerations.- Summary of Contributions.- Finalization Revisited.- The Scientification of Technology.- Normative Finalization.- III. Prospects.- Summary of Contributions.- Science in a Crisis of Legitimation.- Towards a Social Science of Nature.- Introductory Note.- The Finalization Debate: A Reply to our Critics. With a Bibliography of the Finalization Discussion and Debate.- Bibliography of the Finalization Discussion and Debate.- I. The anti-finalization campaign and debate in the media.- III. Contributions to the academic finalization discussion and debate.- Notes on Authors.- Index of Names.
