The Science Policy Crisis: Degenerative Pathologies and Regenerative Therapies. As Mode of an Epilogue

Abstract

The metaphoric assumption for science policy as its behaviour like an intelligent being has permitted to identify a so called “crisis” of this policy as the result of an aging process- more than sixty years have elapsed since the onset of the modern scientific policy. In that degenerative process, a series of pathologies had been diagnosed through a series of critical reviews undertaken by the author under a research programme on the “philosophy of science policy”. By the use of medical and clinical metaphors, I have built a clinical record describing the pathologies and their diagnosis, referring them symbolically to mental and sensorial disorders. Among them, it can be mentioned amnesic process leading for instance to the dissociation between language (discourse) and actions; the poor understanding of the R&D+ innovation concepts and their relationships; the mistaken use by problems of perception of the usual indicators; the transition from euphoria to depression (bipolar disorder) and the subsequent losses of the sense of reality, usually depending on external factors. In agreement with the analogies applied, therapies considered as the modern regenerative treatments are proposed to correct the “crisis” of the science policy. Among those therapies oriented to the care of degenerative processes, the incorporation (transplantation) of concepts such as those of “governance” and “spaces” into the sick body of the science policy is proposed. These old concepts are assumed again symbolically, to act as pluripotent, regenerative elements for a political management usually based on too simplified and traditional academic and bureaucratic approaches.