Dramatic and controversial changes in the funding of science
over the past two decades, towards its increasing
commercialization, have stimulated a huge literature trying to set
out an "economics of science." Whether broadly in favour or against
these changes, the vast majority of these frameworks employ
ahistorical analyses that cannot conceptualise, let alone address,
the questions of "why have these changes occurred?" and "why now?"
Nor, therefore, can they offer much insight into the crucial
question of future trends. Given the growing importance of science
and innovation in an age of both a globalizing knowledge-based
economy (itself in crisis) and enormous challenges that demand
scientific and technological responses, these are significant gaps
in our understanding of important contemporary social
processes.
This book argues that the fundamental underlying problem in all
cases is the ontological shallowness of these theories, which can
only be remedied by attention to ontological presuppositions.
Conversely, a critical realist approach affords the integration of
a realist political economy into the analysis of the economics of
science that does afford explicit attention to these crucial
questions; a cultural political economy of research and innovation
(CPERI). Accordingly, the book sets out an introduction to the
existing literature on the economics of science together with novel
discussion of the field from a critical realist perspective. In
arguing thus across levels of abstraction, however, the book also
explores how concerted engagement with substantive social enquiry
and theoretical debate develops and strengthens critical realism as
a philosophical project, rather than simply applying it.
Divided into two volumes, in this first volume the book explores
the top and tail of the argument, regarding substantive and
philosophical aspects. Starting with substantive illustrations, we
explore the social challenges associated with the contemporary
commercialization of science and the movement towards a
knowledge-based bio-economy. Having shown the explanatory benefits
of assuming a realist political economy perspective, the book then
turns to the task of reconstructing and justifying that theoretical
perspective. True to the overall argument regarding attention to
ontological presuppositions, this starts with critical realism 's
critique of mainstream economics but also develops critical realism
itself towards what may be called a transcendental constructivism
.
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