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Abstract:
The articles assembled in this special issue of ‘Research policy’ are based on a set of papers originally commissioned for a conference held in November 1997 at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. This conference, organized by the editors of this special issue, dealt with the mechanisms that link scientific research and the users of its products, with special emphasis on the consequences this has for the cognitive development of science. This is not a new topic. Since their beginning, science studies have probed into the linking of theory and practice in modern science. Different perspectives in the philosophy, history, and sociology
of science as well as in economic theories of innovation have highlighted manifold facets of their relationship. In the first part of this introduction, we will review some especially influential approaches in science studies to the issue of linking theory and practice—the MertonianrPopperian alliance of the fifties and sixties, the finalization theory of the seventies, and social constructivism which dominated the eigthies, and is still with us today. We will show that each of these approaches has different but equally serious weaknesses which do not allow them to deal adequately with our topic. In the second part of the introduction, we will turn to the contributions in this special issue and argue for a new approach to the old question of how demands of practice influence scientific
development.
