When the journal Minerva was founded in 1962, science and higher educational issues were high on the agenda, lending impetus to the interdisciplinary field of “Science Studies” qua “Science Policy Studies.” As government expenditures for promoting various branches of science increased dramatically on both sides of the East-West Cold War divide, some common issues regarding research management also emerged and with it an interest in closer academic interaction in the areas of history and policy of science. Through a close reading (...) of many early issues of Minerva but also of its later competitor journal Science Studies (now called Social Studies of Science) the paper traces the initial optimism of an academically based Science Studies dialogue across the Cold War divide and the creation in 1971 of the International Commission for Science Policy Studies as a bridging forum, one that Minerva strangely chose to ignore. In this light, attention is drawn to aspects of the often forgotten history of Science Studies in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European block. Reviewed also are several early discussions that are still relevant today: e.g., regarding differing concepts of Big Science, science and democracy, autonomy in higher education and what conditions are necessary to sustain academic freedom and scientific integrity (some of Edward Shils’ primary concerns). Finally, it is noted how the question of quantitative methods to measure scientific productivity lay at the heart of a “Science of Science” movement of the 1960s has re-emerged in a new form integral to the notion of a “Science of Science Policy.”. (shrink)

In _Michael Polanyi and His Generation_, Mary Jo Nye investigates the role that Michael Polanyi and several of his contemporaries played in the emergence of the social turn in the philosophy of science. This turn involved seeing science as a socially based enterprise that does not rely on empiricism and reason alone but on social communities, behavioral norms, and personal commitments. Nye argues that the roots of the social turn are to be found in the scientific culture and political events (...) of Europe in the 1930s, when scientific intellectuals struggled to defend the universal status of scientific knowledge and to justify public support for science in an era of economic catastrophe, Stalinism and Fascism, and increased demands for applications of science to industry and social welfare. At the center of this struggle was Polanyi, who Nye contends was one of the first advocates of this new conception of science. Nye reconstructs Polanyi’s scientific and political milieus in Budapest, Berlin, and Manchester from the 1910s to the 1950s and explains how he and other natural scientists and social scientists of his generation—including J. D. Bernal, Ludwik Fleck, Karl Mannheim, and Robert K. Merton—and the next, such as Thomas Kuhn, forged a politically charged philosophy of science, one that newly emphasized the social construction of science. (shrink)

This intriguing and ground-breaking book is the first in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science in the United States during the Cold War. It documents the political vitality of logical empiricism and Otto Neurath's Unity of Science Movement when these projects emigrated to the US in the 1930s and follows their de-politicization by a convergence of intellectual, cultural and political forces in the 1950s. Students of logical empiricism and the Vienna Circle treat these as strictly intellectual non-political projects. (...) In fact, the refugee philosophers of science were highly active politically and debated questions about values inside and outside science, as a result of which their philosophy of science was scrutinized politically both from within and without the profession, by such institutions as J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. It will prove absorbing reading to philosophers and historians of science, intellectual historians, and scholars of Cold War studies. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ has sold over a million copies in more than twenty languages and has remained one of the ten most cited academic works for the past half century. In contrast, Karl Popper's seminal book _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_ has lapsed into relative obscurity. Although the two men debated the nature of science only once, the legacy of this encounter has dominated intellectual and public discussions on the topic ever since. Almost universally recognized as the (...) modern watershed in the philosophy of science, Kuhn's relativistic vision of shifting paradigms -- which asserted that science was just another human activity, like art or philosophy, only more specialized -- triumphed over Popper's more positivistic belief in science's revolutionary potential to falsify society's dogmas. But has this victory been beneficial for science? Steve Fuller argues that not only has Kuhn's dominance had an adverse impact on the field but both thinkers have been radically misinterpreted in the process. This debate raises a vital question: Can science remain an independent, progressive force in society, or is it destined to continue as the technical wing of the military-industrial complex? Drawing on original research -- including the Kuhn archives at MIT -- Fuller offers a clear account of "Kuhn vs. Popper" and what it will mean for the future of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

The chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) is today recognized as one of the most important twentieth-century thinkers about scientific knowledge and scientific community. Yet Polanyi's philosophy of science exhibits an unresolved tension between science as a traditional community and science as an intellectual marketplace. Binding together these different models was important for his overall intellectual and political project, which was a defense of bourgeois liberal order. His philosophy of science and his economic thought were mutually supporting elements within this (...) political project. Polanyi's intellectual corpus formed a contradictory unity, the tensions within which were manageable only under particular historical conditions. His attempt to hold together traditional authority and the free market fit with, and derived plausibility from, the social conditions under which his philosophical work came to maturity: Keynesian class compromise and surviving habits of social deference within postwar Britain. (shrink)

This paper examines the deployment of science studies within the field of medical ethics. For a short time, the discourse of medical ethics became a fertile ground for a dialogue between philosophically minded bioethicists and the philosophers of science who responded to Thomas Kuhn's challenge. In their discussion of the validity of Kuhn's work, these bioethicists suggested a distinct interpretation of Kuhn, emphasizing the elements in his account that had been independently developed by Michael Polanyi, and propelling a view of (...) science that retreated from idealizations of scientific method without sacrificing philosophical realism. Appropriating Polanyi, they extended his account of science to biology and medicine. The contribution of Karl Popper to the debate on the applicability of philosophy of science to the issues of medical ethics provides the opportunity to discuss the ways in which political agendas of different epistemologies of science intertwined with questions of concern to medical ethics. (shrink)

This paper offers personal reflections on the fashioning of the history of science in Europe. It presents the history of science as a discipline emerging in the twentieth century from an intellectual and political context of great complexity, and concludes with a plea for tolerance and pluralism in historiographical methods and approaches.

One of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century details the events of his career and describes meetings with people who have shaped the philosophical and political character of recent history.

Michael Polanyi and Edward Shils shared a great many views, and in their long mutual relationship influenced one another. This memorial note examines the relationship and some of the respects in which Shils presented a Polanyian social theory organized around the notion of tradition.

In the 1940s the Marxist mathematician and historian of science Samuel Lilley made a substantial contribution to British history of science both intellectually and institutionally. His role, however, has largely gone unnoticed. Lilley is otherwise portrayed either as exemplifying the immaturity of Marxism, most famously by Rupert Hall in ‘Merton revisited’ , or as a tragic figure marginalized during the Cold War because of his communist commitment. But both themes of exclusion and victimization keep Lilley's legacy hidden. By revisiting Lilley (...) and his long-standing commitment to developing our discipline, this essay challenges the notion of radical discontinuity with respect to Lilley's legacy and argues for a more sustained contribution by Marxist historiography of science. This, in turn, requires a more appreciative understanding of the moderate Marxist model developed by Lilley in his popular, political and professional publications on the history of the social relations of science. (shrink)