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The following is an extended announcement for a summer school sponsored by the Central European University that will run from 6 to 31 July 1998 in Budapest on post-Cold War science policy, regarded from the standpoint of Popper's Open Society. While people from any country may apply to attend, only those from former Soviet Bloc countries are eligible for a stipend. If you are interested in receiving an application and more details about the summer school, send a request to <sunreq@ceu.hu> and you'll receive an automatic response. The deadline for applications is 1 FEBRUARY 1998.
The narrative below describes the range of topics, teaching formats, and staff at this summer school. Please forward this message to other appropriate lists.
Karl Popper wrote that the aim of science is truth, and that the objectivity of science depends not upon the objectivity of individual scientists, but upon the friendly/hostile cross-fire of critical discussion that scientists undertake in their pursuit of truth. It has been a commonplace that science is a social institution ever since. But Popper also wrote that social institutions must be both well-designed and well-manned, and that open society cannot survive if science becomes the exclusive domain of a closed set of experts.
But how is it possible, without being an expert, to become an expert in judging experts? Is academic freedom today merely academic? Should the state restrict the flow of scientific information for `security' reasons? Should scientists play a special role in decisions regarding the applications of the technologies that they develop? Is peer review necessary for pruning the tree of knowledge, or is it just a covert form of censorship? Should our top scientists have special access to government officials? Should military and business interests be represented in university curricula? Has the `militarization' of science promoted or impeded basic research? Should the state spend as much money on science as it currently does? Should judicial systems and parliamentary bodies be responsible for judging whether or not a theory is `scientific', or whether or not a technology or drug is `safe', or whether or not a theory can be taught in schools?
Today, many philosophers are beginning to believe that our scientific institutions have been designed and manned in a way that promotes closed society. In Thomas Kuhn's conception of the scientific institution, researchers are mainly concerned with `normal science', and scientific inquiry itself has little to do with critical discussion and the pursuit of truth. And there has been a growing feeling that the scientific institution has, since the second world war, grown more and more dependent upon other social institutions such as military, business, education, and government institutions whose interests are not always consistent with the pursuit of truth through critical discussion. With this in mind, the Popper Project's 1998 Summer School -- Science and The Institution -- will focus upon questions pertaining to the systems of checks and balances that have been developed to insure objectivity in science, and it will attempt to answer them in the context of a case study of the philosophy and biography of James B. Conant.
Kuhn is the philosopher most often associated with the institutional theory of science. But his mentor, James B. Conant, was the man who developed the scientific institution itself.
Conant was a chemist who won the international respect of his peers and nearly every possible award short of a Nobel Prize. He wrote well-known texts, such as Science and Common Sense, in the philosophy of science. And he was, simultaneously, one of the most powerful intellectual/political figures of his time, and a complete enigma to most of his contemporaries. Conant worked on the development of poison gas in World War I and on the atomic bomb in World War II he was, in fact, the man who first suggested that the bomb be used on Hiroshima -- only to fight against the development of the hydrogen bomb. As President of Harvard University from America's Great Depression to its McCarthy era, he was able to influence some of the most powerful political and military figures of his time -- including Roosevelt, Churchill, Truman, and Eisenhower -- regarding the role that science and education should play in society.
Conant struggled with issues regarding academic freedom during the `red scare' period after the second world war -- signing a statement as President of Harvard that sought to bar communists from employment as teachers in the United States, while defending Robert J. Oppenheimer against charges that he posed a security risk. Conant was U.S. Ambassador to Germany (1955-57) during the period of the greatest nuclear threat to Europe. And by agreeing that the National Science Foundation should be willing to undertake defense work for the Pentagon if requested, he became one of people most responsible for what has been called the `militarization of American science'. Conant's philosophy and biography, for all of these reasons and more, provides an ideal case study for the study of Science and The Institution.
Science and The Institution is a four week CEU-SUN course that will run for the entire month of July, 1998. The course will be open to twenty-five post-doctoral scholars from the region. Its teaching format will consist of:
1. tutorials, in which each student would meet with an instructor for at least four one-hour sessions each week to discuss philosophical problems posed by our readings and discussions; and
2. seminar discussions, in which the students and the instructors would meet for three three-hour sessions each week as a group to discuss the issues raised by our texts.
3. lectures, by the course director and faculty.
Personnel:
Director: Mark A. Notturno, Central European University, Budapest
Faculty:
Joseph Agassi, University of Tel Aviv, Israel
Judith Buber Agassi, Tel Aviv, Israel
Steve Fuller, University of Durham, England
Aleksandar Kron, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Miklos Redei, ELTE, Budapest, Hungary
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