REFLECTIONS ON THE CHANGING PROFILE OF SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE
REFLECTIONS ON THE CHANGING PROFILE OF SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE

Summary/Abstract: This paper constitutes a theoretical reflection on the gradually changing profile of science and knowledge, from a reflexive sociological and epistemological standpoint. The first part draws upon some relevant debates on the university, science, knowledge, and their so-called "reflexive turn". The analytic attention here is mainly focused on the sociological and epistemological significance of "knowledge of knowledge", the "naturalization" or "socialization" of epistemology and the multiple effects of social complexity. The second part seeks to comprehensively describe and critically discuss the two central phases of the radical wave of social scientific studies of science and technology. The first "descriptivist" phase is reflexively reconstructed in terms of a social theory of knowledge (social epistemology). The second "postmodern" phase is reflexively reconstructed in terms of a new sense of "knowledge politics". This new sense eventually gives technoscience the unique historical opportunity to creatively accomplish and boost its autonomy, within an ethics of epistemological weakness.

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