Radical Science Essays. Les Levidow, ed. Humanities Press International, Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1986. 240 pp. $29.95 HB, $9.95 PB.
Science maintains, quite admirably I believe, an ethic of absolute impartiality and objectivity. To what degree this ideal is approachable is another matter, one. often sidestepped by practicing researchers, but of great concern to those observers of science troubled by the political implications of technological innovation and the public impact of sociological or biological research. Does a particular line of inquiry serve the general good, or does it merely legitimize narrow class interests? Are there some questions that science had best not ask? Issues of this sort came to the fore, not for the first time, in the turbulent 1960s, spawning a number of organizations and publications, such as the American Science for the People, and the British Radical Science Journal. The latter is the source of most of...
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