Contested Sciences – Between Idealisation and Contempt [in German]

Abstract

Sciences are contested: their results, their methods and their practices. Such disputes are appropriate to the social significance of the sciences. Yet in its current form, these disputes suffer from a dangerously truncated understanding of the sciences, as if there were only one unified science. Against the denial of “science”, its defenders erect an ideal that immunises science against criticism, obscures its diversity and plays into the hands of science deniers, since no actual research practice could ever correspond to it. Against this harmful ideal, Frieder Vogelmann argues for a realistic understanding of scientific practices.