Dare to know, dare to tell, dare to play
Nowotny, Helga (2011)
Nowotny, Helga
The Donner Institute, Åbo Akademi
2011
Kuvaus
Helga Nowotny, Vienna Science and Technology Fund
Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Social Studies of Science, ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and a founding member and President of the European Research Council (ERC). She holds a PhD in sociology from Columbia University (NY) and a doctorate in jurisprudence from the University of Vienna. Her current host institution is the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF). Helga Nowotny is Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the University of Vienna and member of many other international Advisory Boards and selection committees. She is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and long standing member the Academia Europaea. Helga Nowotny has published more than 300 articles in scientific journals. Her latest book publications include Naked Genes: Reinventing the Human in the Molecular Age (with Giuseppe Testa, MIT Press 2011), Insatiable Curiosity: Innovation in a Fragile Future (MIT Press 2008) and Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation (ed.) (New York & London 2006). She is also a member of the advisory board of Aboagora.
Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Social Studies of Science, ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and a founding member and President of the European Research Council (ERC). She holds a PhD in sociology from Columbia University (NY) and a doctorate in jurisprudence from the University of Vienna. Her current host institution is the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF). Helga Nowotny is Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the University of Vienna and member of many other international Advisory Boards and selection committees. She is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and long standing member the Academia Europaea. Helga Nowotny has published more than 300 articles in scientific journals. Her latest book publications include Naked Genes: Reinventing the Human in the Molecular Age (with Giuseppe Testa, MIT Press 2011), Insatiable Curiosity: Innovation in a Fragile Future (MIT Press 2008) and Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation (ed.) (New York & London 2006). She is also a member of the advisory board of Aboagora.
Tiivistelmä
In her concluding statement summarising the discussions and themes presented during the workshops, lectures and concerts of the Aboagora symposium, Helga Nowotny underlines the need for researchers to be courageous and creative as they rethink the Enlightenment heritage in their various fields of research. Researchers today are part of an enormous epochal transformation in science, technology and institution building, she claims. This is a world largely of our own making which provides new opportunities as well as challenges and in which the future cannot be known. Yet, Nowotny points out, we continue with the desire to influence the future and we try to prepare for the encounter with a messy world of enormous complexity, uncertainty and contingency around us. In this situation, she concludes, music can provide science with an important lesson, namely: it is played. Playfulness can provide one possible mode to prepare for the future: by playing one learns to explore and to trust one’s own curiosity. Thus, the Enlightenment is unfinished, but it is also exciting in being unfinished.