Philip Kitcher, Science in a Democratic Society

Minerva 51 (3):389-397 (2013)
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Abstract

Philip Kitcher is a leading figure in the philosophy of science, and he is part of a growing community of scholars who have turned their attention from the field’s long-time focus on questions of logic and epistemology to the relation between science and society. Kitcher’s book Science, Truth, and Democracy (2001) charted a course between relativism and realism, arguing that the aims of science emerge from not only scientific curiosity but also practical and public concerns. The book also drew on John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1999) to develop an ideal of “well-ordered science,” and then applied the ideal to various aspects of the scientific research agenda. Ten years later, complex public issues like climate change have grown more urgent, and with many people questioning mainstream science on climate change, evolutionary biology, vaccines, stem cell research, and other topics, the tensions between science and democracy seem more pronounced than ever. Kitcher’s Science in a Democrat

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Mark B. Brown
California State University, Sacramento

References found in this work

A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition.John Rawls - 1999 - Harvard University Press.
A Theory of Justice.John Rawls - 1971 - Oxford,: Harvard University Press. Edited by Steven M. Cahn.
Justice as fairness: a restatement.John Rawls (ed.) - 2001 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The idea of justice.Amartya Sen - 2009 - Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

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