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A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

Purpose – First, to look closely and critically at Hayek's treatment of science in The Sensory Order. This provides hints as to the difficulties in maintaining a theory of scientific knowledge as a selective sum of the identifiable contributions of individual scientists. Second, to generalize from Hayek's theory of how the brain generates an individual's knowledge to a theory of how science generates scientific knowledge, knowledge that is not a simple sum of individual contributions. Third, to apply this picture of science to understanding developments in postpositivist philosophy and post-Mertonian sociology of science.

Approach – We provide a short survey of the conventional understanding of science and scientific knowledge, including that of Hayek in The Sensory Order. We examine in more depth the ways in which developments in postpositivist philosophy and sociology have transformed our understanding of science. We describe how, by analogy with Hayek's theory of the brain, science can be seen as an adaptive system that adjusts to its environment by classifying the phenomena in that environment to which it is sensitive, and we apply this systemic picture of science with a view to integrating much of the more moderate content of recent philosophy and sociology of science.

Recent changes in the funding and governance of academic research in many OECD countries have altered established authority relationships governing research priorities and judgements. These shifts in the influence of a variety of groups and organisations over scientific choices and careers can be expected to affect the development of different kinds of intellectual innovations by changing the level of protected space they provide researchers and the flexibility of dominant intellectual standards governing the allocation of resources and evaluation of research outcomes. Variations in these features of public science systems influence scientists’ willingness to pursue unusual and risky projects over many years and help to explain cross-national differences in the rate and mode of development of four innovations in the physical, biological and human sciences.

In this chapter we discuss attitudinal and affective factors in the context of science teams. We review some of the key findings on conflict, trust, and cohesion in teams and discuss the differentiation between team-related and task-related definitions of each. In so doing, we discuss their relevance to team effectiveness in science teams and provide guidance on notional areas of research for understanding how these are related to effectiveness in science teams.

Classical (rationalistic) management science is based on an image of what constitutes scientific practice. However, the arena from which this image emanates has moved on quite considerably. As to what now constitutes science, we are drawn to the fact that the idea of an autarkic subject discipline is disappearing and being replaced by a new (cyborg) mode of thinking. Thus, for a scientific, not scientistic, management science we should consider cyborgology: management science as a cyborg science, something more than the empty rhetoric that this label at first implies.

Perhaps the greatest peril to civilisation is the fragmentation of knowledge. Science often lends itself to easy application to technology and our economic systems are the result of applying this knowledge to our resources. But our knowledge of how societies work lags significantly, and the economic system frequently multiplies our social problems. At the heart of the problem is the distinction between knowledge of universals – scientific laws for example – and knowledge of people, who are unique particulars. The paper examines some recent disputes in the social sciences and suggests how the gap might be filled and economic systems made more responsive to social problems.

The purpose of this paper is to survey and analyse the literature emanating from less developed countries (LDCs) and international agencies and dealing with their perception of the needs of LDCs for scientific and technical information (STI) in relation to social and economic development.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the conceptual classification of learning study as a research approach.

The paper is mainly theoretical, drawing on articles concerning classroom‐based research approaches as well as on some distinctions between a university‐based science of the universal and a clinical science of the particular.

The main argument of the article is that learning studies can neither be subsumed under “design and development research” (because this type of research does not include the professional actor) nor under “teacher research” (because it does not pay much attention to theoretical knowledge) nor should it be regarded as a hybrid between design experiments and lesson studies. In spite of similarities to both it should rather be described as clinical research (in analogy to medical clinical research). The use of teachers’ experiences and tacit knowing in the knowledge‐producing process, the iterative process of specification of theory, and the uniqueness of the learning problems among different groups of pupils are central aspects of a particularistic clinical research process. In comparison with lesson study, the learning study is more focussed on constructing knowledge concerning objects of learning as well as teaching‐learning relations. Teachers are included in the research as interpretative professionals making professional sense of particular educational events.

The paper promotes the conceptual discussion of the learning study approach, as well as of both lesson and learning studies as research approaches, i.e. as knowledge‐producing practices.