The Empirical Turn in Bioethics – From Boundary Work to a Context-Sensitive, Transdisciplinary Field of Inquiry

Abstract

The debate on facts and values in (bio)-ethics is also a debate on the contribution of the social sciences and psychology to bioethics and vice versa. This debate has recently reached a new state of reflection. It started with indifference in the early 1970s, when both ethics (philosophy, theology, law) and the (social) sciences (especially medical sociology and medical and social psychology) began to penetrate the field of biomedical science and practice from its margins. A phase of some interest, debate and cooperative efforts followed, when both disciplinary fields bloomed and became institutionalized in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first critique of bioethical reasoning was uttered by the social sciences in the 1980s and 1990s, predominantly not expressed in bioethical but social science and theory of science journals (cf. Hoffmaster 1994). At that time, bioethics was not only established as an important scientific field outside the US, but also as a political endeavor of a pool of experts taking part, and positions in, biomedical and political institutions and debates. Today we witness a fundamental and central scientific debate on a practical, theoretical and epistemological level in the social sciences, philosophy and bioethics. This debate entails a thorough reflection of the contributions of: the social sciences to the core project of bioethics; ethics to the discussions in the social sciences; and both social sciences and bioethics to one of their (many) aims they have in common which is to analyze, reflect on and (I would stress) improve theory and practice of medicine and health care.