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The Risk Debate on Nanoparticles: Contribution to a Normalisation of the Science/Society Relationship?

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Governing Future Technologies

Part of the book series: Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook ((SOSC,volume 27))

Abstract

Since the very beginning of ethical reflection on science and technology, there has been ongoing discussion about adequately timing ethical inquiry in relation to scientific and technological progress. It has often been deplored that ethics fall helplessly behind technical progress and fall well short of fulfilling the great societal expectations of providing moral guidance. The rapid pace of innovation is seen as the main reason why ethical deliberations often come too late (Ropohl 1995). Being too late, however, implies that ethical reflections cannot have any impact because the respective technology and its social consequences are already in “the world”: “It is a familiar cliché that ethics does not keep pace with technology” (Moor and Weckert 2003, see also Habermas 2001)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As an example of a very ambitious and clear formulation: “If involving potential users allows considering a wide range of possible effects and exploring the opportunities and risks of alternatives in a broad social process of deliberation, the concept predicts that we can expect this to lead to a more user-friendly and low-risk socio-technical system with far less unintended adverse side effects” (Weyer 1997: 345 – author’s translation from German).

  2. 2.

    This position is in sharp contrast to approaches of early technology assessment which presupposed a technological determinism forcing society to adaptive measures. The objective of technology assessment was seen as predicting technology impacts and preparing society to be able to deal better with those impacts (following Grunwald and Langenbach 1999).

  3. 3.

    Synthetic nanoparticles are artificially designed particles at the nanoscale (like fullerenes, nanotubes or the titanium dioxide particles used in sunscreens). In this paper, we will concentrate on synthetic nanoparticles of this type and not consider nanoparticles as unintended side effects of production or incineration processes.

  4. 4.

    The Helmholtz Association is an umbrella organisation comprising research centres like FZK that are mainly financed by federal funds. The individual centres of the association are controlled by a trans-institutional budget, which is distributed on application by different topics to specific institutes in the centres (cf. HGF 2003: 4).

  5. 5.

    For a discussion of the concept of “boundary objects” see Star and Griesemer (1989).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76021, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Professor. Dr. Armin Grunwald & Dr. Peter Hocke

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  1. Professor. Dr. Armin Grunwald
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  2. Dr. Peter Hocke
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Correspondence to Armin Grunwald .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Programm für Wissenschaftsforschung, Universität Basel, Missionsstr. 21, Basel, 4003, Switzerland

    Mario Kaiser

  2. Programm für Wissenschaftsforschung, Universität Basel, Missionsstr. 21, Basel, 4003, Switzerland

    Monika Kurath

  3. Programm für Wissenschaftsforschung, Universität Basel, Missionsstr. 21, Basel, 4003, Switzerland

    Sabine Maasen

  4. Inst. Medizin- und, Universität Lübeck, Königstr. 42, Lübeck, 23552, Germany

    Christoph Rehmann-Sutter

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Grunwald, A., Hocke, P. (2009). The Risk Debate on Nanoparticles: Contribution to a Normalisation of the Science/Society Relationship?. In: Kaiser, M., Kurath, M., Maasen, S., Rehmann-Sutter, C. (eds) Governing Future Technologies. Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2834-1_9

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