Finalization in Science

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.

Inhalt
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.