"Advancements in computing, instrumentation, robotics, digital imaging, and simulation modeling are changing science into a technology-driven institution. The pragmatic interests of government, industry, and society increasingly exert their influence over science, raising questions of values and objectivity. These and other profound changes in the world of science have led many to speculate that we are in the midst of an epochal break in scientific history. This edited volume presents an in-depth examination of these issues from philosophical, historical, social, and cultural perspectives. It presents arguments both for and against the epochal break thesis in light of historical antecedents, offering an important occasion for philosophical analysis of the epistemic, institutional and moral questions affecting current and future scientific pursuits. "--P. 4 of cover.
Science after the end of science? An introduction to the "epochal break thesis" / Alfred Nordmann, Hans Radder, Gregor Schiemann -- The age of technoscience / Alfred Nordmann -- We are not witnesses to a new scientific revolution / Gregor Schiemann -- "Knowledge is power," or how to capture the relationship between science and technoscience / Martin Carrier -- Climbing the hill: seeing (and not seeing) epochal breaks from multiple vantage points / Cyrus C. M. Mody -- Breaking up with the epochal break: the case of engineering sciences / Mieke Boon, Tarja Knuuttila -- Science and its recent history: from an epochal break to novel, nonlocal patterns / Hans Radder -- Knowledge-making in transition: on the changing contexts of science and technology / Andrew Jamison -- Alliances between styles: a new model for the interaction between science and technology / Chunglin Kwa -- Experimenting with the concept of experiment: probing the epochal break / Astrid Schwarz, Wolfgang Krohn -- Intensification, not transformation: digital media's effects on scientific practice / Valerie Hanson -- Technologies of viewing: aspects of imaging in natural sciences / Angela Krewani -- Technoscience as popular culture: on pleasure, consumer technologies, and the economy of attention / Jutta Weber -- The good old days: medical research then and now / James Robert Brown -- Toward a new culture of prediction: computational modeling in the era of desktop computing / Ann Johnson, Johannes Lenhard -- Epilogue: the sticking points of the epochal break thesis / Hans Radder.