4.1.1 Public acceptability, science and technology

Both the impinging role of science and technology as well as the importance of its public acceptability can be said to have their roots in the spirit of the Enlightenment. Throughout the eighteenth century a great belief in progress and the controllability of the world through science developed. Longing to be relieved from the dominance of religion and superstition and to be guided by the egalitarian concept of common sense (‘sapere aude’ or ‘dare to know’, as Immanuel Kant captured the programme of the Enlightenment, urging people to start thinking for themselves), the idea of a society in progress through rationalisation gained ground. Science gradually was no longer solely about elite, ‘isolated’ knowledge gathering, but received a societal, ‘applied’ function: the betterment and advancement of the human condition. By the nineteenth century the ‘enlightened research drive’ had greatly improved our understanding of many aspects of the world and its state of affairs, and confidence in science grew. Yet the more advanced it became, the more specialisation it required, thus challenging the egalitarian principle of common sense. For the expert, confidence with regard to one’s research field continued to be based on self-assurance, but for the broader public, for a growing number of topics, it became more a matter of reliance. At the same time the outward, applied character of science became irrevocably entrenched throughout the Industrial Revolution. Thus everybody profited from and marvelled over the wonders of technologies, while its technicalities became more and more difficult to grasp without thorough education and training, and its impacts impinged fundamentally on the organisation of society as a whole (economics, politics, spatial planning, education, . . .).

The social sciences quite rapidly became wary of the more ambiguous societal consequences of these evolutions (e. g. Marxism). Yet the Enlightenment’s enthusiasm towards science and technology was clearly echoed through the concretisation of the paradigm of ‘progress through growth’ in the aftermath of World War II. In fact, it still does. Nevertheless, the (mis)use of science in the World Wars (poison gas, atomic bombs) and a series of well-publicised industrial accidents with serious consequences for human health and the environment slowly but steadily started to blunt the initial overall enthusiasm. Such events illustrated that our current knowledge has it limits and that experts can and do make mistakes. It thus became clear that science and technology can also be deployed negatively, and, moreover, that even without bad intentions they can lead to unforeseen and even unforeseeable consequences. It was realised that science and technology included not only a distribution of ‘goods’, but also of (potential) ‘bads’ (Beck, 1992). Therefore, within more democratic societies a more knowledgeable public found it increasingly difficult to base confidence in technology solely on expert reliance. Both the importance as well as the complexity of public acceptability of science and technology thus came to the foreground.