Politica de la ciencia, institucionalizacion y epistemologia en la constitucion de un contrato social para la ciencia española, 1900-1965

The objective of this project is to research the relationships between science and politics, and their effects on the scientific development, from the perspective of the Social Contract for Science. This objective implies, on the one hand, to research the foundations and analytical scope of the Social Contract for Science model and, on the other hand, to apply this model to the study of the Spanish scientific development.

This research has a theoretical side centered in the analysis of the epistemic assumptions of the model, of its central notions and of its application sphere. The main objective in this field is to contribute to the revision of the epistemic foundations of the model and to participate in the debate that is being developed on this topic. Essentially, the objective is to reformulate some central assumptions of the model from a different epistemic approach to those that have been in the center of the discussion until the moment: the standard approach (the original formulation of the Contract) and the constructivist one from which new proposals are set out. The theoretical notions of "frontier", "integrity" and "productivity" and also the scope of the model will be reviewed by the results of this epistemic analysis.

This research has also an applied side which consists in the analysis of the Spanish scientific-technical development from the perspective of the Social Contract for Science from 1900 to 1968. The main objective of this analysis is to determine whether in this period the relationships between science and politics constituted a Social Contract for Science and which the consequences were for the Spanish scientific development. The aim is to clarify the type of science policy developed in that period, the scientific institutions that resulted, the management and development of the scientific research and the level of scientific productivity. The results of this study will have consequences on the sphere of application of the model, usually restricted to scientific development after Second World War in the countries with a great scientific-technical development.