Science Under the Yoke of Value: A Phenomenological Inquiry into the Evaluation Machinery

Science Under the Yoke of Value examines how science today is fundamentally governed not by an autonomous quest for knowledge and truth, or by the advancement of society, but by coercion to cater to a machinery that feeds on, and in its turn produces, self‑implicating values of “quality”, “impact”, or “productivity”, with disruptive consequences for scientific life as a whole.

Drawing on phenomenological analysis and the insights of thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Galilei, Kant, Husserl, Einstein, Heidegger, and Arendt, this book exposes how scholarly pursuits worldwide have become subjugated by non‑scientific values. It challenges the uncritical acceptance of evaluation practices that threaten to transform academia into a self‑perpetuating system where scholars labour under what the authors aptly term “the yoke of value”. Readers will gain profound insights into the philosophical underpinnings of academic evaluation, moving beyond common discussions of “bureaucratization” or “corporatization” to question the very concept of value that drives these systems. This book uniquely interrogates why enormous resources are devoted to evaluation systems without examining whether these values truly serve science or society, thereby diverting attention from the true menace to present‑day scientific enquiry. This critical analysis helps scholars understand the mechanisms that “magically” prevent questioning of the system itself, offering a framework to recognize how scientific autonomy has been compromised and what this means for the advancement of knowledge.

This volume will appeal to STEM scholars, philosophers, and social scientists alike, interested in scientific integrity and the autonomy of research. University administrators, policymakers, and anyone concerned with the purposes and trajectory of scientific research in contemporary society will find this analysis essential for understanding the current crisis in scientific and academic life.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Maurizio Borghi is Professor of Law at the University of Turin, Italy, Co‑Director of the Nexa Center for Internet & Society, and Faculty Associate of the International University College of Turin. He is the co‑author of Copyright and Mass Digitization and co‑editor of Law, Regulation and Governance in the Information Society.

Ivo De Gennaro is Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Free University of Bozen‑Bolzano, Italy, and Vice‑President of the Meran Academy, Merano, Italy. He is the author of Principles of Philosophy: A Phenomenological Approach and The Weirdness of Being: Heidegger’s Unheard Answer to the Seinsfrage, and the co‑author of The Dictatorship of Value: Teaching and Research in the Planetary University.

Gino Zaccaria is Senior Professor of Theoretical Philosophy and Aesthetics at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, and Co‑Director of the ScienzaNuova school. He is the author of The Enigma of Art. On the Provenance of Artistic Creation, and the co‑author of The Dictatorship of Value: Teaching and Research in the Planetary University.