Books
- Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress
- Choice, Contract, and Constitutions (Collected Works of James M Buchanan, Vol 16 (Paper))
- The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity And Peace
- Industrial Organization: Theory and Practice (2nd Edition)
- The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (World Bank Policy Research Reports)
- Adam Smith and the Origins of American Enterprise : How the Founding Fathers Turned to a Great Economist's Writings and Created the American Economy
- Political Control of the Economy
- The Magical State : Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela
- The Social Health of the Nation: How America Is Really Doing
- Obsolescent Capitalism : Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder
- Environmental Economics: An Elementary Introduction
- Good Government in the Tropics (Johns Hopkins Studies in Development)
- India: Emerging Power
- Nongovernments: Ngos and the Political Development of the Third World (Kumarian Press Books on International Development)
- Cracking the AP Economics Macro & Micro Exam, 2004-2005 Edition (Princeton Review Series)
- The PMP Exam: How to Pass on Your First Try
- Reefer Madness : Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market
- Economics
- The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Great Minds Series)
- The Pecking Order : Which Siblings Succeed and Why
- Inviting Disaster: Lessons From the Edge of Technology
- Macroeconomics
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge Classics)
- Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study
- Econometric Analysis
Average customer rating:
- Best Starting Point for Skeptics
- Important book for democratizing science
- Insightful and challenging work on science and policy
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Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress
Daniel Sarewitz
Manufacturer: Temple University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Similar Items:
- Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion
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- Investing in Innovation: Creating a Research and Innovation Policy That Works
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ASIN: 1566394163 |
Book Description
For the past fifty years, science and technology—supported with billions of dollars from the U.S. government—have advanced at a rate that would once have seemed miraculous, while society's problems have grown more intractable, complex, and diverse. Yet scientists and politicians alike continue to prescribe more science and more technology to cure such afflictions as global climate change, natural resource depletion, overpopulation, inadequate health care, weapons proliferation, and economic inequality.
Daniel Sarewitz scrutinizes the fundamental myths that have guided the formulation of science policy for half a century—myths that serve the professional and political interests of the scientific community, but often fail to advance the interests of society as a whole. His analysis ultimately demonstrates that stronger linkages between progress in science and progress in society will require research agendas that emerge not from the intellectual momentum of science, but from the needs and goals of society.
Customer Reviews:
Best Starting Point for Skeptics.......2005-10-19
This is the best starting points for skeptics who wonder if science is all it is cracked up to be, or for cheerleaders of science too prone to claim science will solve all our problems.
It does not, however, provide a complete picture. Three other books are helpful:
Science, Money, and Politics by Daniel Greenberg is the best over-all review, has a strong ethical component, and shows how the competition for money, rather than scientific progress, is diverting scarce resources and frustrating needed advances.
The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney is the book that is the most compelling on the perversions of the extremist Republicans (I am a moderate Republican). Read this first or last, depending on your disposition.
Finally, Investing in Innovation, edited by Lewis Bramscomb and James Keller, brings together a range of views crossing the environment within which scientific research takes place, evaluationg specific programs and policy tools, and making recommendations (all of which have been ignored by the current Bush Administration).
I take three bottom lines from these four books together:
1) We are spending too much on military science & research.
2) Neither Congress nor the Executive have a serious strategy for prioritizing problems, finding private sector partners, and providing seed money for innovative solutions.
3) Both Congress and the Executive, as well as the public and the media, are incredibly ignorant about what science can and cannot do, and where all the money is going to generally poor effect.
4) This is all so important that Science, like Intelligence, needs its own Supreme Court. I am persuaded we need a new form of hybid public agency that is fully independent of the Executive, receiving a percentage of the total disposable budget (say 3%) and hence not subject to Congression pressures.
I want to stress that this book is an off-set, but should not be read alone. It raises some very important ethical and common sense political prioritization issues, but viewed alone, is too negative. If you buy only one book, buy Greenberg's.
Important book for democratizing science.......2004-07-10
The author states in the preface "I here baldly and unapologetically state that I recognize the scientific method to be a valid technique for approaching what I am pleased to term an objective understanding of the physical and natural world. 'This belief, however, offers no apriory comfort to anyone who would try to answer such questions as What types of scientific knowledge should society choose to pursue? How should such choices be made and by whom? How should society apply this knowledge, once gained? How can "progress" in science and technology be defined and measured in the context of broader social and political goals? And indeed, it is precisely these sorts of question that underlie and motivate this book".
Although I do not agree that there is such a thing as THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD (but a variety of scientific methods) and although I do not agree that specific kinds of methods garantees truth and objectivity, I understand the author's need to distinguish such narrow methodological issues from the broader issues concerning the relations between science and society. These last questions are important in democratic societies, why libraries, masse communication and other institutions, which are supposted to support democracy should make an effort to dissiminate this kind of literature.
Insightful and challenging work on science and policy.......1998-11-19
Not for the thin-skinned! This is a thoughtful and convincing set of arguments as to how and why the U.S. scientific research system often fails to serve the public interest. We'd all be better off if researchers and policy-makers absorbed the lessons in this work.
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