Insatiable Curiosity

Curiosity is the main driving force behind scientific activity. Scientific curiosity,
insatiable in its explorations, does not know what it will find, or where it will lead. Science
needs autonomy to cultivate this kind of untrammeled curiosity; innovation, however, responds to the
needs and desires of society. Innovation, argues influential European science studies scholar Helga
Nowotny, tames the passion of science, harnessing it to produce "deliverables." Science
brings uncertainties; innovation successfully copes with them. Society calls for both the passion
for knowledge and its taming. This ambivalence, Nowotny contends, is an inevitable result of
modernity. In Insatiable Curiosity, Nowotny explores the strands of the often unexpected
intertwining of science and technology and society. Uncertainty arises, she writes, from an
oversupply of knowledge. The quest for innovation is society's response to the uncertainties that
come with scientific and technological achievement. Our dilemma is how to balance the immense but
unpredictable potential of science and technology with our acknowledgement that not everything that
can be done should be done. We can escape the old polarities of utopias and dystopias, writes
Nowotny, by accepting our ambivalence--as a legacy of modernism and a positive cultural
resource.