A ferry between cultures

Abstract

The new field of research into the ethical, legal and social aspects of scientific and technological developments (ELSA) is rapidly becoming a professional field with grants, research programmes and university departments devoted to it. At first glance, ELSA seems to be a new development intended to address questions and challenges that arise from advances in the natural sciences. The professionalization of ELSA resembles that of ‘the history of science’, a research field that emerged at the end of the Second World War. The promise that ELSA makes—that it can reacquaint science with society, and the natural sciences with the humanities and the social sciences—was actually first made by science historians in the first half of the twentieth century (van Berkel, 1988). However, although science historians are thought to have failed in respect to this promise, they did manage to craft a new profession at the intersection of science and society (van Berkel, 1988). The question is whether ELSA will be able to succeed where the history of science failed, or whether history will repeat itself. Reflections on the relationship between science and society are not new, but it is only recently that these have received systematic attention from both scientists and non‐scientists. In addition, the public and policy‐makers increasingly demand that large‐scale research programmes or technological advances should be accompanied by studies of their potential social, political and legal impact. This trend probably began when Nobel laureate James Watson announced that the Human Genome Project would devote a significant amount of its funding to study the so‐called ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) of the full human genome sequence (Kitcher, 2001). Inspired by ELSI and further motivated by a desire not to inflame the public—as happened with GM crops or stem‐cell research, for example—many contemporary international large‐scale research initiatives have …