Science, technology and society: who is

directing whom? (2006)

Due to the success of the Kyoto-lectures, two years earlier and the wish of the Flemish Members of Parliament to put also the science sector itself to a critical test, viWTA (the Flemish Institute for Science and Technology Assessment) organized a second series devoted to the topic ‘Science, society and politics: who is directing whom?’
It invited four leading Flemish and international speakers, who each from their differing but complementary perspective, shed a light on this topical theme.
The diversity of their points of view has not prevented their conclusions and recommendations from converging remarkably. All of them somehow call for an open dialogue with a bigger group of stakeholders and other concerned people, before making any conclusions or policy recommendations about the complicated problems of this time.
In a first contribution, entitled ‘From expert proof to participative dialogue’, Silvio Funtowicz outlines a series of successive models for the relationship between science and society, attempts, every one of them to save the model of modernity. Really questioning that central element will only occur with the rise of the model of ‘postnormal science’ (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993). Scientific quality in this context clearly depends upon an open dialogue.
In the second contribution, ‘Losing and finding each other in nanospace’, Lieve Goorden sketches several uncertainties in technology explorations: strategic uncertainties and uncertainties due to complexity and ambivalence. The latter lead to at least three dilemmas, which can have a positive impact, provided they ask for the foundation of a number of forums where the participants are encouraged to discuss without fear and to radically question science, forced to do so by the stormy developments in the world of technology, and not least nanotechnology, including the determinants of their own cultural identity.
In the third contribution, ‘From a traditional knowledge-based society to social wisdom’, John Grin starts with the observation that societal controversies about science and technology always have to do with the newest technologies and tend to overestimate the possibilities of these innovations. Policy makers have to approach scientific know-how more critically. Science policy must aim at diversity and welcome bottom-up creativity and transdisciplinary cooperation. Finally, Grin emphasizes the importance of ‘intermediary organizations’ situated between science and society, including the Parliamentary institutes for ‘Technolology Assessment’.
In the fourth final contribution, ‘Science and politics, knowledge and policy: a debate with examples from ecologically oriented cases’, Pieter Leroy observes the problem area of the innocent picture of Enlightenment and the Encyclopaedic idea, as it arose during the sixties and seventies and the break with the current risk society, in which the new technologies and the politico-military complex have taken an active part. He neither sees any quality assurance without a solid societal assessment. At last, he would also prefer to oblige politicians to give reasons for (not) following the recommendations coming from scientists.
The four original essays are bundled and published by Eburon (in Dutch only).