ABSTRACT The success of contemporary society in producing knowledge serves to highlight the breakdown between knowledge production and its use. New Orleans and Katrina offer one example of this breakdown. All the knowledge necessary for acting beforehand was available; the problem was not one of knowledge but of will. Geoaesthetics--appropriating the erotic nature of our relationship to the land-is offered as an inter-and transdisciplinary means for making disciplinary knowledge more pertinent.

Los debates acerca de los problemas sociales recurren al conocimiento de las ciencias físicas, la ingeniería, las ciencias sociales, etc. como insumos para orientar la toma de decisiones. Por lo general, sin embargo, estos conocimientos acaban sin ser utilizados, o bien son mal usados.

In circumscribing the various domains of knowledge, disciplines create regions of comparability, marking off epistemology from politics and one epistemology from another. By creating regions of epistemological propriety, they set the terms quid jure (by what right?), identifying who speaks authoritatively on a subject.

One defining feature of modern science and technology is their character as knowledge. Not only is science commonly described as both cognitive activity and a body of knowledge, but technological power has become increasingly knowledge-dependent. Unlike power, knowledge is often judged an unqualified good. From Aristotle to the present, knowledge is often taken to be a good without qualification.

Abstract Paleomagnetic data are used to test controversial aspects of Cordilleran metamorphic core complexes, including the original dip of extensional structures, origin of the mylonitic front, and applicability of rolling-hinge models. We obtained paleomagnetic data (115 sites, 82 accepted for analysis) from the weakly deformed interior of a synkinematic, footwall intrusive suite and Proterozoic footwall rocks of the South Mountains metamorphic core complex, central Arizona.

Over the last 300 years science has been quite successful at revealing the nature of physical reality. In so doing it has provided an epistemological basis for scientific discovery and technological innovation. But science has been decidedly less successful at guiding political debate. How do we conceive of the science‐society relation in the 21st century? How does scientific research hook onto the world in a multi‐faceted, pluralistic, and global age?

Abstract The demand for greater public accountability is changing the nature of ex ante peer review at public science agencies worldwide. Based on a four year research project, this essay examines these changes through an analysis of the process of grant proposal review at two US public science agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Abstract Funding agencies and research councils around the world rely on peer review to assess the potential impacts of proposed research. This article compares the procedures of two major public science agencies—the US National Science Foundation and the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme—for evaluating ex ante the potential societal impact of research proposals.

Many of the concepts that have arisen in space plasma research over the last four decades can be profitably incorporated into the teaching of introductory physics. In this article is an example of how research concepts can inform and improve instruction in basic science courses. There are other examples of this transference, and the community of space physics researchers should make an effort to publicize the ways in which this research can be used to improve instruction in the educational system.

PERSPECTIVES terion into an advertisement for science and technology. One can hardly blame EPO professionals for marketing themselves as experts who can help with issues of broader effects. Unfortunately, however, EPO professionals have now come to be viewed as the group uniquely qualified to help scientists confused about how to satisfy the broader impacts criterion.

The work of the Synthesis of Research on Thinking & Learning in the Geosciences Project has been carried out through an extensive literature review, a virtual Journal Club, a web-based system for sharing manuscript drafts and internal reviews, a week-long writing retreat at Black Rock Forest in Cornwall, NY, and one-to-one collaboration between two-person writing teams each comprising one geoscientist and one cognitive/social scientist.

This vagueness poses challenges to philosophy. Does the term “interdisciplinarity” carry any distinctive epistemic content and any differentia specifica? In addition to what has been achieved in the field of reflection on interdisciplinarity (ID), the aim of this sidebar is to provide a philosophical foundation for a classification and criticism of the innumerable usages of interdisciplinarity. A plurality of meanings will be shown, without a unifying semantic core. There is not one type of ID, but various types coexist.

Background NSF's current review criteria went into effect on October 1, 1997. Over the past decade proposers and reviewers alike have displayed a general facility with addressing the “intellectual merit” of proposed activities; but they often voiced their confusion or resistance to discussing the “broader impacts” of a proposal. Indeed, by 2002 proposer and reviewer attention to BIC was found to be so lax that NSF issued Important Notice No.

Indulge for a moment in a bit of reminiscence, a recollection of stories we were told in our philosophical infancy. Recall the story Plato told through the voice of Socrates, about the Thracian maidservant who “exercised her wit at the expense of Thales, when he was looking up to study the stars and tumbled down a well.

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS 234 Vol. 30 the approach developed by researchers at the Omora Ethnobotanical Park in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve, who conduct programs on Amerindian ecological knowledge and practices, and their implications for environmental philosophy.

Robert Frodeman (frodeman@ colorado. edu) is a research scientist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado. Carl Mitcham (cmitcham@ mines. edu) is professor of philosophy at the Colorado School of Mines. Roger Pielke, Jr.(pielke@ cires. colorado. edu) is the director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado. ing to a research program on the ethical, legal, and social implications of its work.

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RESUMO O padrão pelo qual se avalia o processo de raciocínio da geologia entende que lhe falta uma metodologia própria e distintiva. Pelo contrário, a geologia é descrita como ciência derivada, baseada em técnicas lógicas, tal como exemplificado pela física. Defendo que esta avaliação é insuficiente e distorce nossa compreensão tanto da geologia como do processo científico em geral.

SUMMARY For the past 125 years the university has been the home of knowledge production. The 20th century research university combined a Kantian belief in disciplinarity, a Humboldtian commitment to linking research and education and upholding academic autonomy, and a Cartesian allegiance to infinite knowledge production.

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to participate in ongoing scientific research. Existing either as stand-alone summer programs or as supplementary components to existing NSF research grants, the REU program focuses on introducing aspiring young scientists to the delights and complexities of science.

A policy turn in environmental philosophy means a shift from philosophers writing philosophy essays for other philosophers to doing interdisciplinary research and working on projects with public agencies, policy makers, and the private sector. Despite some steps in this direction, a policy turn remains largely unrealized within the community of environmental philosophers.

With such questions in mind, in 1969 I helped create a research center devoted to the ethical and policy problems of medicine and biology. It was eventually called The Hastings Center, named after the town in which we started, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY (Callahan 1999). I recruited a neighbor to work with me, Willard Gaylin, a psychiatrist who had been an English major at Harvard before going into medicine, and the author of interesting books on various social problems having little to do with the technical problems of psychoanalysis, his specialty.

In 1989 Sarewitz left science to work for the us Congress-an institution that he describes as being in many ways the antithesis of academe. Congress made clear to him what science had sought to obfuscate or even deny: that reality operates on many levels simultaneously, that these multitudinous realities are often conflicting and incommensurable, and that there is no possible long-term equilibrium state in which such tensions are resolvable. For four years, Sarewitz worked for Congressman George E.

In February 2007, fifteen environmental philosophers gathered for two days of meetings at the University of North Texas. Their purpose: to discuss the future of their field. Nearly four decades past the first Earth Day and the first philosophic discussions concerning our relationship to the Earth, environmental philosophy finds itself at a crossroads.

The relationship between science and society today is troubled. The first, more academic part of these troubles has played itself out in the literature of policy journals, while the second has engaged a wider audience including scientists, decision makers, and the general public. The first crisis is one of the policy sciences; the second is one of science policy. The term 'crisis,'although dramatic, is nonetheless justified. In the first case, policy scientists are concerned over the very future of their trade (Pielke, 2004).

Certainly, the University has discontents. Our students can verify that. To be an academic—even more, to be a humanities professor—is to be something of a professional discontent. We complain about—and to—our students, colleagues, and bosses; we exercise oedipal urges, slaughtering our intellectual forbearers (again and again: They just won't stay dead).

Abstract Deliberations concerning societal problems need to complement disciplinary knowledge with cultivation of the erotic element underlying disciplinary perspectives. This is particularly true in the case of New Orleans. The erotic character of the city is tied to the geologic conditions that so markedly define both its past and future.

This past fall, the University of North Texas (UNT) established the world's first center for the study of interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinary centers for the study of this or that issue are common, as are centers that focus on one or another aspect of interdisciplinarity (eg, the University of Bielefeld's Center for Interdisciplinary Research or Harvard's Project Zero), but no center has focused on the issue of interdisciplinarity in itself and, insofar as possible, in its entirety.

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Science and technology have become geologic phenomena: like grinding tectonic plates, subtle incremental movements over time add up to decisive transformations of our cultural topography. According to many pundits, nanotechnology will be the next manifestation of this process—subterranean changes that will burst upon society with little warning. Or so some believe, with varying degrees of hope and fear.

Abstract The standard account of the reasoning process within geology views it as lacking a distinctive methodology of its own. Rather, geology is described as a derivative science, relying on the logical techniques exemplified by physics. I argue that this account is inadequate and skews our understanding of both geology and the scientific process in general. Far from simply taking up and applying the logical techniques of physics, geological reasoning has developed its own distinctive set of logical procedures.

Robert Frodeman is Professor of Philosophy at UNT and the Director of the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity (CSID). He brings expertise in continental philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, philosophy of science policy, science and technology studies, and the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity. Britt Holbrook is a Research Assistant Professor of Philosophy and the Assistant Director of CSID.

Robert Frodeman is Professor of Philosophy at UNT and the Director of the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity (CSID). He brings expertise in continental philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, philosophy of science policy, science and technology studies, and the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity. Britt Holbrook is a Research Assistant Professor of Philosophy and the Assistant Director of CSID.

Debates about societal problems turn to the knowledge of physical sciences, engineering, social sciences, etc. as inputs for orienting decision making. Usually, however, this knowledge end up being un-or ill-used. In order to explain the wrong use of knowledge, this paper explores the role played by failures of will and of integration, and offers an erotics of knowledge as a means for better connecting production and use of knowledge. The case of New Orleans and hurricane Katrina provides an example for exploring these points.

Resumen: Las recientes llamadas de atención desde la comunidad científica para una «cartera más equilibrada» en la inversión pública en ciencia han sostenido la necesidad de complementar los incrementos en los fondos para la investigación biomédica con aumentos en los soportes de las investigaciones físicas, informáticas y de materiales junto con un apoyo reforzado al nivel superior de educación científica. Tales argumentos presumen que la ciencia es un bien público no cualificado.