William Rehg
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262182713
- eISBN:
- 9780262255318
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262182713.003.0011
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter revisits all the previous chapters of the book and explains the “prescriptive character of critical contextualism in relation to substantive critical assessment.” Three types of ...
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This chapter revisits all the previous chapters of the book and explains the “prescriptive character of critical contextualism in relation to substantive critical assessment.” Three types of controversies posing challenges for contextualist analysis—interdisciplinary scientific controversies, science-intensive policy debates, and exchanges between atheistic champions of evolutionary biology and Christian believers—are also discussed. Several important questions about the relation of scientific arguments to discursive contexts outside the sciences have been raised in two case studies discussed in previous chapters of the book. This chapter emphasizes that the answers to certain scientific questions depend on how one views the “good society.”Less
This chapter revisits all the previous chapters of the book and explains the “prescriptive character of critical contextualism in relation to substantive critical assessment.” Three types of controversies posing challenges for contextualist analysis—interdisciplinary scientific controversies, science-intensive policy debates, and exchanges between atheistic champions of evolutionary biology and Christian believers—are also discussed. Several important questions about the relation of scientific arguments to discursive contexts outside the sciences have been raised in two case studies discussed in previous chapters of the book. This chapter emphasizes that the answers to certain scientific questions depend on how one views the “good society.”
