Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty

Re-Thinking Science presents an account of the dynamic relationshipbetween society and science. Despite the mounting evidence of amuch closer, interactive relationship between society and science,current debate still seems to turn on the need to maintain a 'line'to demarcate them. The view persists that there is a one-waycommunication flow from science to society - with scant attentiongiven to the ways in which society communicates with science.The authors argue that changes in society now make suchcommunications both more likely and more numerous, and that this istransforming science not only in its research practices and theinstitutions that support it but also deep in its epistemologicalcore. To explain these changes, Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons havedeveloped an open, dynamic framework for re-thinking science.The authors conclude that the line which formerly demarcatedsociety from science is regularly transgressed and that theresulting closer interaction of science and society signals theemergence of a new kind of science: contextualized orcontext-sensitive science. The co-evolution between society andscience requires a more or less complete re-thinking of the basison which a new social contract between science and society might beconstructed. In their discussion the authors present some of theelements that would comprise this new social contract.