New UGP publication: Meta Science: Towards a Science of Meaning and Complex Solutions

The book Meta Science: Towards a Science of Meaning and Complex Solutions is now available online and open access at University of Groningen Press (UGP).

The book is edited by Andrej Zwitter (professor of Governance and Innovation at the Campus Fryslân) and Takuo Dome (Osaka University).

About the book

Science has lost its ethical imperatives as it moved away from a science of ought to a science of is. Subsequently, it might have answers for how we can address global challenges, such as climate change and poverty, but not why we should. This supposedly neutral stance leaves it to politics and religions (in the sense of non-scientific fields of social engagement) to fill in the values.

The problem is that through this concession, science implicitly acknowledges that it is not of universal relevance. This leaves the ethics embodied in current economic and legal systems fundamentally unchallenged. This split into scientific and non-scientific domains of existence is rather odd. One would assume that science to fulfill its claim for universal validity is equally interested in the domains of matter as well as that of ideas.