Reconsidering the Understanding of Technoscientific Knowledge (Essay‪)‬

INTRODUCTION For almost two centuries, the "enlightenment" teleological conceptions of Reason and cumulative Progress (as normative ends in their own right) have overwhelmingly dominated Eurocentric governance discourses on science and technology, and unreflexively attained an indisputably hegemonic status (1). In the wide context of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and the social studies of technology, it is rather customary to play off a familiar "model" which is often used to negatively characterize Modernity and its positivistic origins: The deficit model of the public understanding of science.