European Experiments

Abstract

European science policy, as well as the creation of research agendas for converging technologies, functions as a testing ground for a transnational European identity. In light of competing conceptions of European identity formation, the European Commission’s Sixth Framework Program (2002–2007) adopted an experimental mode. Given that the quest for European identity is already an open‐ended experiment, the policy process invites experiments in governance, for example, by developing participatory schemes. Moreover, as European science studies scholars advance the notion of “real experiments” in the laboratory of society, one basis for identity formation among Europeans is to be the very fact that they all partake in “collective experiments” with new technologies. This analysis draws for its central cases on the creation in 2003/2004 of a “European vision” for converging technologies and a 2007 report on innovation processes in the “European knowledge society.” It thereby highlights also the contribution of historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science and technology to the European quest for identity.