Considerations on the Centre d’Alembert symposium ‘Promises of science, science of promises’

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What effects do techno-scientific promises have on scientific activity, on our societies and on science/society relationships? How do the policies and administration of sciences embed this promise in researcher’s practices? The Centre d’Alembert’s symposium on ‘Promises of sciences, science of promises’ investigated these questions by confronting the views and analyses of researchers in the humanities and social sciences and in the experimental sciences. Nowadays in a regime of presentist historicity, promises have become the motor of research in the face of a future filled with threats. Under this regime, knowledge production has been assimilated with technical production, and research is being managed as a project-based business. Entrepreneurs of promises engage in a competition for these projects, drawing up roadmaps and promising ever increasing deliverables. Even if such promises fail to solve all the problems, they remain and are reaffirmed. Theses promises are based on powerful socio-technical imaginaries capable of convincing different publics, capturing and directing all resources towards technological choices, which condition our future through innovation paths, without any real debate or assessment of consequences. As a result, these innovation paths shut out any alternative form of research, thus eliminating other possible futures. In short, what kind of future do we want? And for whose benefit? What role(s) for public research?