The harnessing of science and technology as forces for sustainable development depends on processes that will ensure the involvement of all appropriate scientific input and expertise in problem identification and response. Scientific excellence and integrity need to be combined with a close...

This paper summarises some of the challenges to science that are posed by the search for sustainability. These challenges are not only technical ones, such as more affordable or reliable equipment for health care, water quality control and refrigeration. There are also fundamental empirical and...

The harnessing of science and technology as forces for sustainable development depends on processes that will ensure the involvement of all appropriate scientific input and expertise in problem identification and response. Scientific excellence and integrity need to be combined with a close...

As biology moves into the digital realm, new ways of representing, manipulating, and appropriating life are emerging. In this paper, the authors examine systems and synthetic biology and map imaginaries of the making of life. The authors present how they have worked with scientists in three...

Risk and responsibility have always been linked philosophically in the Western tradition. The purpose of this article is to discuss possible alternatives to the centrality of the risk discourse, arguing that such alternatives call for a revision in the concept of responsibility, decoupling it...

What is the role of participatory processes in decision-making related to science and technology and in any other area where knowledge and expert advice play an important role? Can expert advice to policy makers be more transparent and accountable? This introduction discusses these and other...

This paper describes simulations in an artificial society in which autonomous agents exchange gifts. In this society agents perform simple acts that are looked at by the others and are analysed so that a common image is created for each agent (a reputation). The model is based on numerous...