Science and Technology, Rationalisation and Modernisation
The terms rationalisation and modernisation refer to an interrelated complex of
societal and cultural developments which have changed fundamentally the character of
Europe, North America as well as an increasing number of other societies. While its orgins
can be traced to a specific location (Europe) and historical period (since the seventeenth
century), the process of transformation, according to the so-called 'rationalisation
thesis', is supposed be universally applicable. In western culture the discovery of
specific principles of rational thought, research and action both explains and legitimates
its global cultural, political and economic expansion.
Science and technology assume a prominent position in this process of transformation.
Without technology and the natural sciences, the emergence of the modern, industrialized
society would have been unthinkable. A comparable relationship consists in the twentieth
century behavioral and social sciences and the social technologies of administration,
management and policy-making.
Over the past century and especially in the decades after World War II, the social and
cultural position of science and technology has changed gradually. Once the domain of a
few, scientific and technological research now has become the calling of many, not to
mention an explicit topic of government concern. Besides the relatively autonomous, often
academic research, the study of science and technology increasingly is being conducted in
diverse institutional environments, in new locations - as R&D firms, consulting firms,
software houses and the like - and often in close collaboration with professional
practices. Science and technology have moved from being relatively independent subsystems
within societies to inherent components of modern societies. Science, technology, culture
and society are developing more and more poignantly in interaction with another.
The increasing interpenetration of science, technology and modern culture and society
implies five core questions, the answers to which can contribute to a diagnosis of modern
society and culture:
- What roles do science and technology play in the transformation (or rationalisation)
process in which societies are entangled, and how are these roles to be empirically
researched and theoretically clarified?
- How are science and technology being influenced, substantively and organisationally, by
the societal and cultural processes in which they are interwoven?
- How are the boundaries being drawn between science, technology and the culture in which
they are produced and reproduced, and how are these boundaries being made visible and
invisible?
- How are normative questions concerning science and technology taking shape, and what
does this imply for the manner in which these questions are treated? and finally,
- The reflexive question: How are analyses of the development of modern culture and
especially the position of science and technology to be legimated, without appealing to
the prevailing epistemological vocabulary, which in itself is a characteristic result of
the rationalisation process?
- Over the past few decades Dutch research into the field of study outlined above has been
developed in the following areas:
- research into the development of the modern research system, including a quantitative
description of its development (scientometrics);
- research into the social construction of technological artifacts and systems and the
social regulation of technology;
- research into the manner in which cultural boundaries and conflicts arise as a result of
technology and science and into how normative problems take shape socially and culturally;
and
- research into the development of science in connection with professional practices in
the w/lfare state (in particular, health, social and technical sciences).
In all of these areas, Dutch researchers have gained an high-standing international
reputation. Since 1988 the Dutch Summer School has established an international name for
itself. Leading researchers and graduate students from England, Scotland, France, Germany,
Austria, Denmark and Scandanavia have taken part in the program.