Abstract
Reflecting upon the topic indicated by the title, I was astonished to realize that although many different roles (moral, political, financial ones) are accorded to the public by thinkers of different persuasions and fields of expertise, none of the roles is, however, a truly cognitive one.1 And that none of the strictly taken philosophers of science in the last two centuries has been concerned with systematically exploring the cognitive aspect of the relationship between science and its public. Lots of excellent papers deal with how the public can promote or hinder (by political or financial means) scientific research, but none of them with whether the public has or can have a role at all in the process of scientific cognition and how this would affect the evaluation and acceptance of knowledge claims within science itself.
A former version of this paper has been published in the International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1990.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Algarotti, F. (1739): Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the Use of the Ladies (London)
Basalla, G. (1976): Popular Science: the Depiction of Science in Pop Culture, in: Holton and Blanpied eds. (1976)
Collins, H. M. (1988): Public Experiments and Displays of Virtuosity: The Core-set Revisited, Soc. Stud. Sci. vol. 18. No. 4., Nov. 1988. pp. 725–748
Culliton, R.: Science’s Restive Public, in: Holton and Morrison (eds.) (1979)
Elena, A. (1987): The Birth of the Experimental Method: an Externalist Approach (ms. of a talk given at the Boston Colloquium, Oct. 1987 )
Fehér, M. (1990): The Triumphal March of a Paradigm, TRACTRIX, Vol. 2, 1990
Feyerabend, P. (1977): Science in a Free Society, NLB, London
Fuller, S. (1987): On Regulating What is Known: A Way to Social Epistemology, Synthese, vol. 71, No. 1, Oct. 1987. pp. 145–184
Gilbert, M. (1987): Modelling Collective Belief, Synthese, vol. 73. no. 1. Oct. 1987, pp. 184–204
Goldman, A. (1987): Foundations of Social Epistemics, Synthese, vol. 73, No.1., Oct. 1987., pp. 109–204
Hacking, I. (1975): The Emergence of Probability, Cambridge Univ. Press
Hardwig, J. (1985): Epistemic Dependence, J. Phil. vol. LXXXII, No. 7. July, 1985, pp. 335–349
Holton, G. and Blanpied, W. (1976) eds.: Science and its Public: the Changing Relationship, BSPS XXXIII, Reidel Publ.
Holton, G. and Morrison, R.S. (eds.) (1979): Limits of Scientific Inquiry,New York
Hume, D. (1902): An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Selby and Bitge ed., Oxford, Oxford Univ.
Locke, J. (1894): An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Fraser (ed.) Oxford, Oxford Univ.
Schmitt, F. (1987): Justification, Sociality and Autonomy, Synthese, vol. 73, No. 1, Oct. 1987. pp. 43–86
Shapin, S. (1984): Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle’s Literary Technology, Soc. Stud. Sci., vol. 14, No. 4, Nov. 1984. pp. 481–520
Shapin, S. and Schaffer S. (1985): Leviathan and the Air-Pump,Princeton
Shapiro, B. (1983): Probability and Certainly in 17th century England, Princeton, Univ. Press
Shapley, L. and Grofman, B. (1984): Optimizing Group Judgmental Accuracy in the Presence of Interdependence, Public Choice 43, pp. 329–343
Shils, R. (1976): Faith, Utility and Legitimacy of Science, in: Holton and Blanpied eds. (1976)
Toulmin, S. (1979): Remarks made at a conference on Biomedical Research and the Public, Airlie House, Apr. 1976 (quoted by Culliton, 1979)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fehér, M. (1999). The Changing of the Role Accorded to the Lay Public in Science. In: Fehér, M., Kiss, O., Ropolyi, L. (eds) Hermeneutics and Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 206. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9293-2_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9293-2_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5257-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-9293-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive