Science and the State

Abstract

As a body of knowledge, a host of techniques of investigation, a sociocultural configuration, and an outlook, science was a major factor in the emergence of modernity and the shaping of the modern state. Science and technology constituted a principal resource for the military empowerment of the modern state. In addition, they provided technical instruments, organizatonal tools, and powerful justifications for the interventions of the modern state in such diverse areas as public health, industry, city planning, agriculture, transportation, and more recently environmental protection. In the course of the nineteenth century, the faith in the capacity of science to objectively describe, explain, and control nature was gradually extended to human affairs as sociology, economics, psychology, and other social sciences appeared to certify scientific accounts of social facts and scientific techniques of intervention. While the natural and the social sciences could thus play an important role in the development and the modes of operation of the modern public bureaucracy, they could at the same time be enlisted in free societies as powerful means of public criticism of the state and its actions. Nevertheless, the increasing role of science and technology in modern military conflicts and economic or industrial competition has undermined the long-standing apolitical status of science and technology. Together with these developments, new challenges to the powers and authority of the modern state posed by the globalization of the economy and mass communications, the transformation of relatively homogeneous into ethnically heterogeneous societies, and the spread of multiculturalism, diminished the capacity of the state to function as an agent of large-scale science-based projects. On the other hand, the increasing role of the market and private agents in the applications of science and technology enhances the responsibilities of the state as a regulator charged with protecting the private citizen and the public against the misuses of sciences and technology and their unintended effects.