Science and its critics

reflections on anti-science

Helga Nowotny

pp. 1-26

in: Helga Nowotny, Hilary Rose (eds), Counter-movements in the sciences, Berlin, Springer, 1979

Abstract

When setting out to plan this volume, we had a reasonably clear idea of what we understood by counter-movements: social forms of protest, contemporary as well as historical, which were critical of scientific rationality and at times hostile to specific technological developments. We were interested in their salient characteristics, in terms of social origins and intellectual concerns, and wanted to analyze the specific forms which ideological clashes between scientific and other forms of knowledge could take. We expected rebellion and resistance against the dominant faith of scientific rationality and wanted to extend our intellectual concerns to an analysis of the kinds of rationalities which were being developed within or against the existing sciences.