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SCIENCE IS STILL
THE GREAT intellectual adventure, but now it is
also seen as an instrument of profit, power and
privilege. Wrongly used, it might yet make the 21st
century our last.
To make sense of all
this, we need to let go of old ideas and
assumptions. In the No-Nonsense Guide to
Science, Jerome Ravetz introduces the
'post-normal' way of thinking about science. We
transcend the old simplistic ideas of perfect
certainty and objectivity in science. They have
justified dogmatism in teaching, and they have
failed to protect people and the environment when
science goes wrong. Now we must admit
value-loading, uncertainty and ignorance in
science, as well as the need for citizens'
participation in the policies involving science.
The book includes a
refreshing new look at the history of science, and
concludes with a questionnaire that enables anyone
engaged in science to find themselves in the
picture.
JEROME RAVETZ is an
esteemed philosopher of science who has taught at
the universities of Leeds, Utrecht, Shanghai, and
Harvard. His seminal work is Scientific
Knowledge and Its Social Problems (1996).
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