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Some Economists Rush to Rescue Science from Politics, Only to Discover in Their Haste, They Went to the Wrong Address

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The Social Sciences and Democracy

Abstract

Does a particular political predilection, often associated with neoliberalism, tend to foster skepticism towards modern science? In the middle of the last decade, a number of journalists thought so (Mooney, 2005); and with the election of Barack Obama, many of those same journalists rejoiced that now science would once more be restored to its rightful place in the polity. But attitudes towards both science and politics turn out to be much more entrenched, with roots running deep into theories of political economy, and thus exhibiting a more stubborn persistence than most of those commentators realized. Indeed, currently attitudes towards the politics of science are heavily bound up with the extent to which science is seen to readily respond to public ‘demands’, something that is frequently conflated to the extent to which science is subordinate to the dictates of the marketplace. Consequently, it will prove useful to summarize some recent developments in the economics of science to begin to comprehend why science is still under stress in the modern polity.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fellow of the Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values, University of Notre Dame, USA

    Philip Mirowski (Carl Koch Professor of Economics and the History and Philosophy of Science)

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  1. Philip Mirowski
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ghent University, Belgium

    Jeroen Van Bouwel

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© 2009 Philip Mirowski

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Mirowski, P. (2009). Some Economists Rush to Rescue Science from Politics, Only to Discover in Their Haste, They Went to the Wrong Address. In: Van Bouwel, J. (eds) The Social Sciences and Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246867_11

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