How to Study the Force of Science

Abstract

Let us start with a statement of the obvious: science and technology are powerful forces in modern industrialised society and are accordingly of vital direct and indirect importance to many. Of course they are of central interest to scientists and science policy-makers, but they also concern parties as diverse as big industry, the military, governments, lobbies, groups of concerned citizens and the general public which may be both excited by and feel powerless in the face of scientific advance. At the same time, however, their inner workings remain opaque. The way in which their force is created and deployed is obscured by the wide range of ways in which this can occur, and by the myth-making that surrounds the whole process.