Scientists and 'anti-scientists' alike need a more realistic image of science. The traditional mode of research, academic science, is not just a 'method': it is a distinctive culture, whose members win esteem and employment by making public their findings. Fierce competition for credibility is strictly regulated by established practices such as peer review. Highly specialized international communities of independent experts form spontaneously and generate the type of knowledge we call 'scientific' - systematic, theoretical, empirically-tested, quantitative, and so on. Ziman shows (...) that these familiar 'philosophical' features of scientific knowledge are inseparable from the ordinary cognitive capabilities and peculiar social relationships of its producers. This wide-angled close-up of the natural and human sciences recognizes their unique value, whilst revealing the limits of their rationality, reliability, and universal applicability. It also shows how, for better or worse, the new 'post-academic' research culture of teamwork, accountability, etc. is changing these supposedly eternal philosophical characteristics. (shrink)

Why believe in the findings of science? John Ziman argues that scientific knowledge is not uniformly reliable, but rather like a map representing a country we cannot visit. He shows how science has many elements, including alongside its experiments and formulae the language and logic, patterns and preconceptions, facts and fantasies used to illustrate and express its findings. These elements are variously combined by scientists in their explanations of the material world as it lies outside our everyday experience. John Ziman’s (...) book offers at once a valuably clear account and a radically challenging investigation of the credibility of scientific knowledge, searching widely across a range of disciplines for evidence about the perceptions, paradigms and analogies on which all our understanding depends. (shrink)

In this 1976 volume, Professor Ziman paints a broad picture of science, and of its relations to the world in general. He sets the scene by the historical development of scientific research as a profession, the growth of scientific technologies out of the useful arts, the sources of invention and technical innovation, and the advent of Big Science. He then discusses the economics of research and development, the connections between science and war, the nature of science policy and the moral (...) dilemmas of social responsibility in science. Each topic is introduced by reference to easily understandable particular examples, with a large number of illustrations chosen to bring out the concreteness and reality of science as a human activity. Professor Ziman gives a chapter-by-chapter list of suggested topics for oral and written discussion, intended to provoke critical, sceptical attitudes to simplified solutions to real issues, and comments briefly on relevant books and other sources. (shrink)

In this 1974 book a practising scientist and gifted expositor sets forth an exciting point of view on the nature of science and how it works.

The purpose of this book is to give a coherent account of the different perspectives on science and technology that are normally studied under various disciplinary heads such as philosophy of science, sociology of science and science policy. It is intended for students embarking on courses in these subjects and assumes no special knowledge of any science. It is written in a direct and simple style, and technical language is introduced very sparingly. As various perspectives are sketched out in this (...) book, the reader moves towards a consistent conception of contemporary science as a rapidly changing social institution that has already grown out of its traditional forms and plays a central role in society at large. It will appeal to students in a wide range of scientific disciplines and complement well Professor Ziman's earlier books. (shrink)

[Editor's introduction: The following are excerpts from three talks given at the conference "Policies and Publics for Science and Technology, " London, April 1990. They introduce a British research initiative in public understanding of science and point to early results. The program was developed and coordinated by the Science Policy Support Group. At the meeting, a new journal for specialists in this area was launched: Public Understanding of Science, to be edited by John Durant, Science Museum, London SW7 2DD, UK. (...) The first issue of the journal is expected to appear in April 1991. Science, Technology, & Human Values reaffirms its long commitment to publishing research on public attitudes toward science and particularly welcomes articles on this topic of general interest to the field of science and technology studies.]. (shrink)

Nowadays, science is treated an instrument of policy, serving the material interests of government and commerce. Traditionally, however, it also has important non-instrumental social functions, such as the creation of critical scenarios and world pictures, the stimulation of rational attitudes, and the production of enlightened practitioners and independent experts. The transition from academic to ‘post-academic’ science threatens the performance of these functions, which are inconsistent with strictly instrumental modes of knowledge production. In particular, expert objectivity is negated by entanglement with (...) political and commercial interests. We cannot go back to the old academic model for science, but need to consider how to maintain its vital non-instrumental roles. (shrink)

This superb collection by the eminent physicist and critic John Ziman, opens with an album of portraits of scientists--Albert Einstein, Freeman Dyson, Lev Landau, Mark Azbel, Andrei Sakharov. Ziman takes readers into the world of the contemporary scientist, showing how discoveries are made and how claims are tested. He then travels into the minds of scientists as they are drawn into competing directions. Here Ziman exposes the path of discovery, which is strewn with complex human needs, governmental restrictions, the desire (...) for profits, and the exercise of technical virtuosity. (shrink)

For scientific knowledge to be trustworthy, it needs to be dissociated from material interests. Disinterested research also performs other important non-instrumental roles. In particular, academic science has traditionally provided society with reliable, imaginative public knowledge and independent, self-critical expertise. But this type of science is not compatible with the practice of instrumental research, which is typically proprietary, prosaic, pragmatic and partisan. With ever-increasing dependence on commercial or state funding, all modes of knowledge production are merging into a new, ‘post-academic’ research (...) culture which is dominated by utilitarian goals. Growing concern about conflicts of interest is thus a symptom of deep-seated malaise in science and medicine. (shrink)

In this book John Ziman seeks the answers to crucial questions facing scientists who need to change the direction of their careers.

Research scientists are trained to produce specialised bricks of knowledge, but not to look at the whole building. Increasing public concern about the social role of science is forcing science students to think about what they are actually learning to do. What sort of knowledge will they be producing, and how will it be used? Science education now requires serious consideration of these philosophical and ethical questions. But the many different forms of knowledge produced by modern science cannot be covered (...) by any single philosophical principle. Sociology and cognitive psychology are also needed to understand what the sciences have in common and the significance of what they generate. Again, traditional modes of ethical analysis cannot deal adequately with the values, norms and interests activated by present-day technoscience without reference to its sociological, political and economic dimensions. (shrink)

A discussion of the human side of science, originally published in 1981.

Ever since Darwin, scholars have noted that cultural entities such as languages, laws and theories seem to evolve through variation, selection and replication. These essays consider whether this comparison is just a metaphor.

Muy distinto a otros libros de carácter similar, cuidadosamente razonado, pero sin realizar un análisis técnico de la naturaleza y significado del conocimiento científico, ¿Qué es la ciencia? abre el camino a la reconciliación en la llamada “guerra de las ciencias”. A través de la descripción de cómo los científicos abordan realmente la investigación y transmiten sus resultados, muestra que la filosofía, la psicología y la sociología de la ciencia están inextricablemente relacionadas, y que el “realismo” y el “relativismo” son (...) sólo dos caras de la misma moneda. Estudia, además, cómo, para bien y para mal, la nueva cultura de la investigación “postacadémica”, basada en el trabajo en equipo y la responsabilidad, está cambiando las características filosóficas, supuestamente eternas, de la ciencia. (shrink)

Western thought since the seventeenth century has been dominated by methodological solipsism (Krieger, 1991). The famous sound-bite of René Descartes 'cogito, ergo sum': 'I think, therefore I am', became the starting point for most discourse on the nature of things. This dictum does not advocate idealism. It does not assert that everything is necessarily a construct of the human mind. But it assumes that the world of things and beings is surveyed and interpreted from the point of view of a (...) single individual. Nowhere is this stance more entrenched than in the philosophy of science. To a remarkable degree the scientist is represented as studying the natural world as if alone in it, served only by mindless assistants who might as well be replaced by machines. Scientific theories are presented as systems of thought conjured up and tested by that same individual in a further series of single-headed operations. Research results are formulated and treated philosophically as the independent findings of lone explorers, each reporting the evidence of their own eyes and their rational inferences concerning the hidden mechanisms by which these personal percepts might be generated. Our epistemological role models are Robinson Crusoe and Sherlock Holmes, self-sufficient intellectuals to whom their human companions, Friday and Watson, are mere stooges. (shrink)

Scientists often find difficulty in engaging in formal public debate about transcientific social issues. Although science is a highly disputatious institution, public argumentation amongst scientists follows very different conventional practices from those that rule in political and legal arenas. Amongst other differentiating features, scientific disputes are typically conducted in writing rather than orally, they are not sharply polarised or formally adversarial, they are seldom addressed to a specific proposition, and they do not reach decisive closure. As a result, the rhetorical (...) style that scientists learn from participation in such practises is not well adapted to the established format of socio-political 'debate'. For scientists to contribute effectively to such debates, they must learn new ways of making their particular type of knowledge convincing in unfamiliar intellectual and social contexts. (shrink)

En este artículo se analizan las relaciones del conocimiento científico con las sociedades en las que se produce. Tras repasar sus diversas funciones en tipos distintos de sociedades, la discusión se centra en los fines de la ciencia en las sociedades democráticas pluralistas. Frente al cada vez mayor rol instrumental de la ciencia, por el que ha recibido los nombres de «ciencia postacadémica» o «tecnociencia», se defienden los roles no instrumentales tradicionales de la investigación académica clásica. Se argumenta que sólo (...) si la ciencia académica mantiene su autonomía y su integridad frente a intereses políticos o empresariales podrá ser de utilidad al público al ofrecerle conocimiento imparcial y fidedigno frente a los sesgos producidos por la naturaleza propia de la ciencia postacadémica. (shrink)

These days, science is everywhere. It pervades our whole society. Sometimes it is just a clutter of commonplace frivolities, like new fashion fabrics. Sometimes it miraculously preserves our life, like penicillin. Sometimes, like climate change, it looms over us as a portent of doom: sometimes it promises a way of escape from such a fate. Sometimes, like a nuclear warhead, it enshrouds us in political terror: sometimes, like a verification technology, it offers an antidote to such evils. How should we (...) respond to this ambiguous and ubiquitous thing called science? (shrink)