Abstract
One long cited rationale for doing and funding Western modern sciences has been that such research advances social welfare in egalitarian ways. Yet the long service of these sciences to militarism, nationalisms, profit–maximizing, and the desire for social control would seem to provide compelling evidence, at least in the contemporary era, against the happy relation imagined in this rationale. This essay reviews the older utopian and dystopian responses to the title question, and examines their assumptions about the nature of science which no longer are empirically or theoretically justifiable. It then identifies themes in recent empirical and theoretical work which point the way to a more realistic understanding of the kind of philosophy of science necessary to contribute to sciences in the service of social justice. Philosophies of science, like the sciences on which they reflect, always participate in larger social discourses.
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