The Boundaries of Science
Publisher: Typotex
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Budapest, Hungary
Format: Papernack
Number of pages: 382
ISBN-13: 9789639664982
Description: "As these lines are writ­ten, a media celebri­ty talks about our su­per­hu­man na­ture with a ki­ne­si­ol­o­gist on a pop­u­lar radio chan­nel, where, in the morn­ing pro­gramme well-known economists and stock mar­ket ex­perts anal­yse eco­nom­ic pro­cess­es. A bit of ra­tio­nal choice the­o­ry at dawn and es­o­teri­cism in the evening - the very same radio chan­nel broad­casts mul­ti­ple truths. Are these com­pat­i­ble? This ques­tion may seem too ab­stract, since not all of us are stock­hold­ers, and many don't even know
what ki­ne­si­ol­o­gy is. How­ev­er, our per­son­al lives con­front us with nu­mer­ous sit­u­a­tions where we have to make de­ci­sions con­cern­ing ex­perts and knowl­edge-claims, and these de­ci­sions often in­flu­ence our fate and fu­ture, and the fu­tures of the  peo­ple we love. We ex­pect spe­cif­ic an­swers to spe­cif­ic ques­tions. Which treat­ment should I pick for an ill­ness? What kind of eco­nom­ic poli­ciy should I sup­port with my vote? Shall I buy Pi-wa­ter, cell phone ra­di­a­tion shields, mag­net­ic mat­tress­es, coen­zyme pills or an­tibi­otics? Shall I buy these all? Or none of them? Sure­ly, after all these ques­tions, I'll have to buy some painkillers for my headache."

The book starts out with the prob­lem of sci­ence ver­sus pseu­do­science, both in the light of rel­e­vant the­o­ret­i­cal tra­di­tions and in the frame­work of an ev­ery­day life prac­ti­cal per­spec­tive. The dis­ci­plinary treat­ment of the prob­lem from the light of so­ci­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, and his­to­ry of sci­ence is fol­lowed by five case stud­ies - on the In­tel­li­gent-De­sign de­bate, on para­psy­chol­o­gy, on West­ern as­trol­o­gy, on acupunc­ture re­search, and on pop­u­lar pseu­do-his­to­ries. The final chap­ters re-the­ma­tize the prob­lem and tar­get ques­tions con­cern­ing the pub­lic un­der­stand­ing of sci­ence, ex­pert-de­pen­dent de­ci­sion pro­cess­es, ar­gu­men­ta­tion the­o­ry, and con­tem­po­rary sci­ence stud­ies. The tar­get­ed au­di­ence is wide, rang­ing from sci­ence 'pro­fes­sion­als' (uni­vesi­ty teach­ers and stu­dents, re­searchers) to the 'lay' peo­ple try­ing to un­der­stand the so­cial and pub­lic role of sci­ence in our world.