A debut book offers an ambitious examination of a new approach to the formulation of policy regarding science.
As the pace of new technology quickens exponentially, there is a concomitant need to make pertinent policy faster and more nimbly. This new approach not only needs to be speedy, but encompass the multitude of economic, governmental, and sociological ramifications of new scientific breakthroughs as well. Michelson laments the current inverse relationship between science and government—as scientific discovery skyrockets, the government’s relevant agencies, like the Office of Technology Assessment, are either disappearing or suffering from radical defunding. But in crisis lies opportunity, and the author recommends a pivot away from a centralized, bureaucratically directed approach to policymaking in favor of “anticipatory governance.” Much of the book is devoted to explaining that concept, its history, and both its past and future applications. The approach divides into three main ideas: First, “foresight,” or the preparation for a broad spectrum of “plausible futures.” Second, there is an emphasis on “engagement,” involving the outreach to lay stakeholders so they can collaborate with scientific experts. Finally, the goal of “integration” is meant to create a partnership between both natural and social scientists. Michelson trains his attention on the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies and its groundbreaking use of anticipatory governance, and he seeks to apply its methodologies to the field of synthetic biology. This is a rigorously researched work that exhaustively surveys mountains of germane literature. Despite the challenging nature of the subject, this is a generally accessible book even to the uninitiated, because the author carefully explains anticipatory governance from its historical inception and even supplies lucid explanations of nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Sometimes the prose gets bogged down in the kind of gratuitously dense, bloodless language that afflicts academic writing and instructions for building furniture, and the use of initialisms and acronyms is promiscuous enough that Michelson provides a glossary: “While the focus here has been on the EHS risk research inventories produced by PEN and ICON, the role of PEN’s CPI as a boundary object in its own right should not be shortchanged either.” But for those interested in the latest ideas on science policymaking, this book is more than worth the extra effort. An astute, painstakingly documented introduction to anticipatory governance written with thoroughness and expertise.
Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-138-12343-4
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
