Introduction

science in its social setting

pp. 1-17

in: Joseph Agassi, Science and society, Berlin, Springer, 1981

Abstract

Our recent past is strewn with landmarks commemorating recent swift cultural developments: political events like the Cold War, the Hungarian revolt, and Khrushchev's Speech culturally considered; space probes and walks and travels taken technologically, scientifically, poetically, and politically; truth in packaging and the Suez crisis in British politics and the Watergate crisis; the eruption of black liberation and women's liberation and the sexual revolution and student revolts, and the New Left enter and exit before you could assess their worth and impact on science, on campus style of life, on international politics and on the new ecological fashions; with, finally, the Viet Nam War and its impact on cultural life in general, on politics, on ideology, on the social sciences and on social philosophy, perhaps even on scientific research.