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The ethical distress of the (post)modern world stimulates and directs us to reflect our ethical and cultural grounds. Man is a transcendent being. He cannot reach or put in order immediate goods he needs if he is not prepared to acknowledge the grounds of his person and develop the virtues of prudence, love, hope, faith, wisdom, justice, courage, temperance etc. These are ethical questions concerning different worldviews and cannot be solved only by scientific methods. Many people who in the past did not care for religion as such, now take seriously religious personal and societal aspects of humane life. The fundamental crucial questions of man are ethical questions. They are in various ways related or perplexed with the question of faith and of science.

The paper poses the question whether the economics of science could be the key to economic methodology. First, the sociology of science, which tries to put science in social context, is described. Then, the economic approach to science, inspired by Tullock, Stigler and Becker, is explained. We point out the problem of circle, according to which putting science in context does not imply relativism as concerns the truth. This conclusion underlines the Popperian message of the paper. Adapted from the source document.

Does science think or does it not think, this traditionally philosophical dilemma has today become, according to the central thesis of this essay, inherent to science itself. The author argues that it is in the interest of contemporary science itself to affirm itself as thought. It is precisely this perspective of science as thought which implies the ethical dimension of science. This is not to be understood in the sense of the necessity of some prohibitive instance such as an ethical demand, but rather in the sense that science, for its own internal reasons, should not give up regarding its desire: to be, both, an experiment of thought & a condition for thought. Only by being useful for thought can science be useful for something else. Adapted from the source document.