Making 'Science as a Public Good' meaningful: response to Stehr, Turner, and Sassower

Abstract

I respond to the challenging comments of Nico Stehr, Stephen Turner and Raphael Sassower to my own article on the sense in which science can be regarded as a ‘public good’. I agree with Stehr that this conceptualization brings various hazards that are exacerbated with increasing democratization of the knowledge
system. Here I elaborate on an astute remark he raises from Georg Simmel. Based on a historically well informed account, Turner takes a more ‘demystified’ view of science as a public good, ultimately seeing it as corresponding to John Ziman’s idea of ‘reliable knowledge’. For his part, Sassower pursues a more  transcendental’ approach about knowledge being in the ‘common good’, while admitting that it is an aspiration rather than a reality.