Production, Science and Epistemology. An Overview on New Models and Scenarios

Abstract

During the XX century, the industrial and economic organization of developed countries has radically changed. First, the development of new technologies has moved production from linear mechanisms such as the Fordist assembly line to complex industrial networks in which information and communication play a central role. Moreover, this development has deeply modified scientific and technological R&D and more generally it has had an impact on the structure of scientific and technological research establishments and their epistemological framework. This new scenario opens still unquestioned problems. Has the end of the Fordist factory something to do with the end of obsolete Big Science institutions? Does the birth of new research establishments fit within a general change of production models? And finally, to what extent does this change affect the epistemological framework? The changes involving the context of production, science and epistemology are crucial to understand the development of model-based reasoning. Therefore we will try here to compare and contrast them.