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The place of people in our knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

Helga Nowotny
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Abstract

The science system of Western civilization is facing irreversible transformations. These transformations will affect the relationship between the public image of science and the actual practice within the sciences. In a situation in which scientists are increasingly asked ‘what have you lately done for us’, the alleged purity and objectivity of the sciences have to be reconsidered and we have to rethink the place of people in the knowledge produced by the sciences. Bringing together insights from social and historical studies of science, this article argues for the awareness of a more local, historically and socially contingent knowledge production, which – due to this local embeddedness – can lead to a socially more robust science.

Type
Focus: Science and society
Information
European Review , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , May 1999 , pp. 247 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 1999

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