Editing Science studies (section)

== Scope ==
The field started with a tendency toward [[Omphaloskepsis|navel-gazing]]: it was extremely self-conscious in its genesis and applications.<ref name=vulc/> From early concerns with scientific [[discourse]], practitioners soon started to deal with the relation of scientific expertise to politics and lay people.<ref name=vulc/> Practical examples include [[bioethics]], [[bovine spongiform encephalopathy]] (BSE), [[pollution]], [[global warming]],<ref>Martello M (2004) Global change science and the Arctic citizen.Sci Public Policy 31(2):107–115</ref><ref>Jasanoff S (ed) (2004) States of knowledge: the co-production of science and social order. Routledge, Abingdon</ref> [[biomedical sciences]], [[physical sciences]], [[natural hazard]] predictions, the (alleged) impact of the Chernobyl disaster in the UK, generation and review of science policy and risk governance and its historical and geographic contexts.<ref name=vulc/> While staying a discipline with multiple metanarratives, the fundamental concern is about the role of the perceived expert in providing governments and local authorities with information from which they can make decisions.<ref name=vulc/>

The approach poses various important questions about what makes an expert and how experts and their authority are to be distinguished from the lay population and interacts with the values and policy making process in liberal democratic societies.<ref name=vulc/>

Practitioners examine the forces within and through which scientists investigate specific phenomena such as
* technological milieus, epistemic instruments and [[Epistemic cultures|cultures]] and [[laboratory life]] (compare [[Karin Knorr-Cetina]], [[Bruno Latour]], Hans-Jörg Rheinberger)
* science and technology (e.g. [[Wiebe Bijker]], [[Trevor Pinch]], [[Thomas P. Hughes]])
* science, technology and society (e.g. [[Peter Weingart]], [[Ulrike Felt]], [[Helga Nowotny]] and [[Reiner Grundmann]])
* language and  [[rhetoric of science]] (e.g. [[Charles Bazerman]], [[Alan G. Gross]], Greg Myers)
* [[Aesthetics#Aesthetics and science|aesthetics of science]] and visual culture in science (u.a. [[:de:Peter Geimer|Peter Geimer]]), the role of aesthetic criteria in scientific practice (compare [[mathematical beauty]]) and the relation between emotion, [[cognition]] and rationality in the development of science.<ref>International Studies in the Philosophy of Science   Volume 16,  Issue 1, 2002, Recent work on aesthetics of science DOI:10.1080/02698590120118783 James W. McAllister pages 7-11, 21 Jul 2010</ref>
* [[semiotics|semiotic]] studies of creative processes, as in the discovery, conceptualization, and realization of new ideas.<ref>Zeichen für Kunst: Zur Organisierbarkeit von Kreativität Detlev Nothnagel, ZfS, Band 29, Heft 4/2007 ZfS, Band 29, Heft 4/2007 {{ISBN|978-3-86057-887-2}}</ref> or the interaction and management of different forms of knowledge in cooperative research.<ref>Organisierte Kreativität: Die vielen Gesichter der Innovation, Rene J.Jorna, in Zeichen für Kunst: Zur Organisierbarkeit von Kreativität Detlev Nothnagel, ZfS, Band 29, Heft 4/2007 ZfS, Band 29, Heft 4/2007 {{ISBN|978-3-86057-887-2}}</ref> 
* large-scale research and research institutions, e.g. particle colliders ([[Sharon Traweek]])<ref>{{cite book | last = Traweek | first = Sharon | author-link = Sharon Traweek | title = Beamtimes and lifetimes: the world of high energy physicists | publisher = Harvard University Press | location = Cambridge, Massachusetts | year = 1992 | isbn = 9780674044449 }}</ref>
* [[research ethics]], [[science policy]], and the role of the university.<ref>Mario Biagioli: ''The science studies reader''. Routledge, New York 1999, {{ISBN|0-415-91867-7}}</ref><ref>[[Derek de Solla Price]]: ''Little Science, Big Science. Von der Studierstube zur Großforschung.'' Suhrkamp, 1982, {{ISBN|978-3518076484}}.</ref>