LAUSR

ABSTRACT The ethics of science becomes a significant part of science and technology studies since it pays attention not exclusively to the moral impact of society on scientists but to that of science on society as well. How can society benefit from scientific intellectuals apart from their ability to produce expert knowledge? Does and must science contribute to common good? The ethical impetus generated by Max Weber’s lecture ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf’ (Science as Vocation) helps bridge a gap between these two dimensions: a ‘profession’ as a feature of science’s social institute and ‘vocation’ as an existential propensity of a person. Hume’s guillotine and the Merton-Popper paradox are also attempts to elucidate and to sharpen the factual autonomy of profession and vocation pointed out by Weber in order to reconcile these two dimensions. I propose a project of the ethos of science assimilating some approaches in virtue epistemology in order to resolve the paradoxes.As a result, the special epistemological status of science is justified not as an internal and autonomous priority of knowledge but as science’s ability to generate and transmit cognitive goals, norms and ideals to society.