Anais do XXI Seminário Internacional Nanotecnologias, Sociedade e Meio Ambiente desafios jurídicos éticos e sociais para a “grande transição sustentável” (XXI SEMINANOSOMA) 318 stood – or guaranteed – only by scientific and research excellence criteria (“science of production”). Rather, it is structured around the identification of dimensions and quality criteria, which do not refer to science but to the scientific activity so manifestly integrated into socio-technical dynamics (“science of impacts”). Hence, the conditions of socio-technical relationality prove to be an intrinsic attribute of scien- tific activity quality understood as socio-technical relational quality. This chapter therefore argues that the conditions of such relational quality constitute the core of scientific activity and are not mere ad hoc contextual circumstances. To this end, the “science of impacts” in its current sense will be clarified in the framework of the RRI approach as “science of the right impacts” (von Schomberg 2014). First (section 2), three conceptual approaches are identified that offer elements to understand the interweaving of science-society and its implications when considering science in terms of its impacts. These approaches offer diverse images of science: (i) one oriented towards application contexts (Mode 2 knowledge production (Gibbons et al. 1994)) where scientific activity is understood as being governed by co-evolutionary dynamics between science and society, (ii) another, termed post-normal science, integrates agents and perspectives from non-strictly epistemic societal domains into the field of scientific decisions, and so proposes a political epistemological understanding of science governed by risk and uncertainty (Funtowicz and Ravetz 2000); and finally, (iii) a reticular conception of science made up of complex socio-technical networks, as in Actor-Network Theory, ANT (Callon 1995, Latour 2005). The three approaches coincide in that they recognise new dy- namics of scientific knowledge production where elements such as the heterogeneity of actors and materiality involved, and their logics and values, are relevant and pose changes in institutional guidelines. These perspectives assign explanatory status to the science-society link in order to understand new scientific research patterns. Moreover, as shall be seen, ANT is epistemologically opposed to the science-so- ciety duality and, alternatively, proposes that it be seen as a complex unit that is highly heterogeneous in its composition of elements and interactions. Second (section 3), elements of interest in the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach for an updated clarification of “science of impacts” are critically presented. Contributions by von Schomberg (2011, 2012) and Owen, Stilgoe and associates (Owen et al. 2012, Owen et al. 2013, Stilgoe et al. 2013 and Stilgoe et al. 2014) are
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