Practical integration: The art of balancing values, institutions and knowledge – lessons from the History of British Public Health and Town Planning

Abstract

The paper uses two historical examples, public health (1840-1880) and town planning in Britain, to analyse the challenges faced by goal-driven research, an increasingly important trend in science policy, as exemplified by the prominence of calls for addressing Grand Challenges. Two key points are argued. (1) Given that the aim of research addressing social or global problems is to contribute to improving things, this research should include all the steps necessary to bring science and technology to fruition. This need is captured by the idea of practical integration, which brings this type of research under the umbrella of collective practical reason rather than under the aegis of science. Achieving practical integration is difficult for many reasons: the complexity of social needs, the plurality of values at stake, the limitation of our knowledge, the elusive nature of the skills needed to deal with uncertainty, incomplete information and asymmetries of power. Nevertheless, drawing from the lessons of the case studies, it is argued that (2) practical integration needs a proper balance between values, institutions and knowledge: i.e. a combination of mutual support and mutual limitation. Pursuing such a balance provides a flexible strategy for approximating practical integration. Research for policy-making and practical actionis inevitably conducted in a political context. If research is to be 'useful' it must relate to the art of the possible (Pahl 1975, p. 5) the stakes here are not to make sciences 'progress', but to raise to the challenges facing society (Stengers 2002, p. 98)

Harvesting the promise of AOPs: An assessment and recommendations

“…In practice, this demands attention both to the production of knowledge (making sure that AOPs meet high standards of epistemic robustness and are not influenced by research susceptible to conflicts of interests or biases) and to the translation and integration of that knowledge into social processes. Such integration also raises the question of how to deal with incompleteness of scientific knowledge and whether and how to complement it with non-scientific knowledge dispersed in society ( Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993 ; Nowotny et al, 2001 ; De Grandis, 2016 ).…”