SCIENCE AS POWER Discourse and Ideology in Modern Society

• Main Author: Aronowitz, Stanley (Author)
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: London Macmillan Press 1988
• Subjects: Science
• Online Access: Click Here to View Status and Holdings.
• Item Description: Includes index
• Physical Description: 385 pages illustrations 24 cm
• ISBN: 0333475461; 9780333475461; 033347547X

Science, argues stanley Aronowitz has established itself as not merely the dominant but the only legitimate form of human knowledge. By linking its truth claims to methodology, science has claimed independence from the influence of social and historical conditions. Science is therefore seen as an authority beyond critique, whose norms and values are neutral, self-evident, and absolute. In Science as Power, Aronowitz asserts that the norms of science are by no means self-evident and that science is best seen as a socially constructed discourse that legitimates its power by pre-senting itself as truth. Although he is sympathetic to those who criticize knowledge for the power it grants its possessors, or who condemn its sometimes destructive uses, Aronowitz focuses instead on the subtle triumph of the scientific dis-course itself. Even critical discussions of sci-ence emulate, consciously or not, its norms; tices known as the oppositional prac Marxism, by for example, have long been dominated science. He studies Marxism because it bac launched a critique of science; ultimately however, its critique endorses or leaves intact and unexamined its own claims to be a science