The truth of the matter is that our deficiency does not lie in the want of well-verified "facts." What we lack is our bearings. The contemporary experience of things technological has repeatedly confounded our vision, our expectations, and our capacity to make intelligent judgments. Categories, arguments, conclusions, and choices that would have been entirely obvious in earlier times are obvious no longer. Patterns of perceptive thinking that were entirely reliable in the past now lead us systematically astray. Many of our (...) standard conceptions of technology reveal a disorientation that borders on dissociation from reality. And as long as we lack the ability to make our situation intelligible, all of the "data" in the world will make no difference.;From the Introduction. (shrink)

Scientific and technological policy issues are not and should not be exempt from the norms of democratic governance. This article examines two major theories of democracy, analyzes their commonalities and differences, and derives criteria for evaluating various forms of public participation in policymaking. The author argues for a new category of participation, participatory analysis, that includes forms of participation that satisfy democratic criteria and emphasizes the importance of learning among participants. Different types of participatory analysis may be best suited to (...) different kinds of policy problems. (shrink)