IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/109300.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

History of science and its utopian reconstructions

Author

Listed:
  • Paskins, Matthew

Abstract

In recent years explicitly utopian visions have reappeared across the political spectrum. To a surprising degree these visions have drawn on histories and science and technology. What should scholars of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) make of these developments? The concept of utopia has often been treated with considerable distrust in these fields, as an indication of closed end-directed blueprints, or as an indication of fantasies of limitless technological improvement and purification of categories. Alongside this uneasiness, however, HPS and STS scholars have also projected transformative ambitions, seeking to recover from the past different ways of knowing and relating to the human and non-human world. By engaging with critiques of utopia from thinkers including Karl Popper, Otto Neurath, Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway, and exploring some of the utopian strands which have recurred in studies of science and technology—including the longing for integration, the association of science with planning, and the ways in which feminist scholars have envisaged alternative forms of science—we can understand the ongoing, and often unrecognised, utopian dimensions of HPS and STS.

Suggested Citation

  • Paskins, Matthew, 2020. "History of science and its utopian reconstructions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 109300, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:109300
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/109300/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew Pickering, 2009. "The Politics Of Theory," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1-2), pages 197-212, July.
    2. Erickson, Paul & Klein, Judy L. & Daston, Lorraine & Lemov, Rebecca & Sturm, Thomas & Gordin, Michael D., 2013. "How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226046631, December.
    3. Patri Friedman & Brad Taylor, 2012. "Seasteading: Competitive Governments on the Ocean," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(2), pages 218-235, May.
    4. Roger Pielke, 2014. "In Retrospect: The Social Function of Science," Nature, Nature, vol. 507(7493), pages 427-428, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bruno Frey, 2013. "European unification: a new proposal," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 285-294, December.
    2. Sylvain Lenfle & Christoph Loch, 2017. "Has Megaproject management lost its way ? Lessons from History," Post-Print hal-03640779, HAL.
    3. Fèvre, Raphaël, 2021. "The Madman and the Economist(s): Georges Bataille and François Perroux as French Critiques of the Marshall Plan," OSF Preprints 6hnvk, Center for Open Science.
    4. Kirtchik, Olessia & Boldyrev, Ivan, 2024. "“Rise And Fall” Of The Walrasian Program In Economics: A Social And Intellectual Dynamics Of The General Equilibrium Theory," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 1-26, March.
    5. Martin Obschonka & David B. Audretsch, 2020. "Artificial intelligence and big data in entrepreneurship: a new era has begun," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 529-539, October.
    6. Malte Doehne & Catherine Herfeld, 2023. "How academic opinion leaders shape scientific ideas: an acknowledgment analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2507-2533, April.
    7. Michael Ben‐Gad, 2022. "Russia versus the West: Facing the long‐term challenge," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 385-394, June.
    8. Pascal Le Masson & Armand Hatchuel & Mario Le Glatin & Benoit Weil, 2018. "Designing Decisions In The Unknown: Towards A Generative Decision Model For Management Science," Post-Print hal-01937103, HAL.
    9. Fèvre, Raphaël, 2019. "Georges Bataille, François Perroux and French Critiques of the Marshall Plan," OSF Preprints acb6z, Center for Open Science.
    10. Pascal Le Masson & Armand Hatchuel & Benoit Weil, 2016. "Innovation theory and the logic of generativity: from optimization to design, a new post-decisional paradigm in management science," Post-Print hal-01481881, HAL.
    11. Veale, Michael & Brown, Ian, 2020. "Cybersecurity," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 9(4), pages 1-22.
    12. Cherrier, Beatrice & Saïdi, Aurélien, 2019. "A century of economics and engineering at Stanford," SocArXiv adtbj, Center for Open Science.
    13. Sylvain Lenfle & Pascal Le Masson & Benoit Weil, 2014. "Using design theory to characterize various forms of breakthrough R&D projects and their management: revisiting Manhattan & Polaris," Post-Print hal-01002713, HAL.
    14. Rouhani, Omid, 2023. "Public Policy: A science and/or a Field?," MPRA Paper 118121, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Düppe, Till, 2020. "War after War: Wilhem Krelle,1916-2004," OSF Preprints a8rq3, Center for Open Science.
    16. Veale, Michael & Brown, Ian, 2020. "Cybersecurity," LawArXiv c8p36, Center for Open Science.
    17. Veale, Michael & Brass, Irina, 2019. "Administration by Algorithm? Public Management meets Public Sector Machine Learning," SocArXiv mwhnb, Center for Open Science.
    18. Nelson, Nicole C. & Keating, Peter & Cambrosio, Alberto & Aguilar-Mahecha, Adriana & Basik, Mark, 2014. "Testing devices or experimental systems? Cancer clinical trials take the genomic turn," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 74-83.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Anthropocene; Feminist theory; Integration; Planning; Pluralism; Utopia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B10 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - General
    • B20 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:109300. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.