Unhastening Science: Autonomy and Reflexivity in the Social Theory of Knowledge (Studies in Social & Political Thought)

This book offers a new account of what makes science special among other human pursuits, critically engaging with a variety of approaches, especially constructivist and relativist studies of science and technology. It focuses on the studied ‘lack of haste’ of science, its relative stress-freeness and its socially sanctioned withdrawal from the swift pace of ordinary life. Unhastening Science offers a balanced and thoughtful argument which emphasises the dangers of cosseting science from the ‘scourge’ of internal competition while at the same time highlighting the need for ‘distance’ between the process of scientific thought and the faster machinery of politics, business, sports, and the media.

Dick Pels has been Professor of Sociology at Brunel University since 1998, having previously taught at the Universities of Amsterdam and Groningen in the Netherlands, latterly as a Professor in the Social Theory of Knowledge. He is a Research Fellow of CRICT (Brunel's Centre for Research into Innovation, Culture and Technology) and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research. He has edited various Dutch sociological journals and has been an Associate Editor of the journal Theory, Culture and Society since 1990. Professor Pels is the author or co-author of a number of books in Dutch as well as the author of Property and Power in Social Theory. A Study in Intellectual Rivalry (Routledge) and The Intellectual as Stranger. Studies in Spokespersonship (Routledge).