From Trust to Crisis: Scientific Credibility and Institutional Legitimacy in the 20th Century, Panel at 2025 History of Science Society Annual Meeting

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F67985921%3A_____%2F25%3A00640796" target="_blank" >RIV/67985921:_____/25:00640796 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/hss/hss25/online_program_direct_link/view_session/2256930/" target="_blank" >https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/hss/hss25/online_program_direct_link/view_session/2256930/</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

From Trust to Crisis: Scientific Credibility and Institutional Legitimacy in the 20th Century, Panel at 2025 History of Science Society Annual Meeting

Original language description

Science and technology can contribute to legitimization. This is reflected in the recognition that the results of Soviet science helped to legitimize Soviet political actors and the Soviet project more broadly. An especially vivid demonstration of this comes from Kendall Bailes’ classic case-study on how the achievements of Soviet aviation were used by Stalin to legitimize his rule in the 1930s. The historical resources on science and (nondemocratic) political legitimization remain however unexploited in philosophers’ theoretical discussions concerning science, credibility, and legitimacy. The aim here is to establish a firmer link between philosophical accounts on the above themes and the works of historians, with a special focus on Soviet chemistry. The salience of science for political legitimacy is demonstrated by examining more closely Nikolai Semenov’s work on branched chain reactions. Semenov is known as the first Soviet scientist to become a Nobel laureate, but less known is that he issued his theory as a response to a crisis of scientific credibility. Examining this trajectory reveals how issues of scientific credibility can lead to results that ultimately help to legitimize the broader political project, which is helpful for the theoretical goal of mapping how outputs of science can contribute to political legitimacy.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

M - Conference organization

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60101 - History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Event location

New Orleans

Event country

US - UNITED STATES

Event starting date

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Event ending date

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Total number of attendees

5

Foreign attendee count

2

Type of event by attendee nationality

WRD - Celosvětová akce