8. 9. 2026
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Engaged impartiality? Science and Politics in the Anthropocene from the STS perspective
Presentation for the Summer school "Anthropocene: Contemporary world in a transdisciplinary perspective" organised by CTS in September 2026, Prague
7. 11. 2025
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Počátky, které se potichu vytratily: O co přicházíme se sociologií vědeckého poznávání [Beginnings that quietly faded away: What we are losing with the sociology of scientific knowledge]
Presentation for the 59th outdoor workshop of CTS, November 7-9, 2025
In Czech only
5. 11. 2025
:::: Na hranici důvěry: věda a vědecké poznání ve „věku podezírání“ [On the edge of trust: science and scientific knowledge in the "age of suspicion"]
Panel discussion, The Week Of The Czech Academy of Sciences, seminar room of CTS, start at 17h. Participants: Jan Maršálek, Petr Koubský, David Hlaváček, Eva Hejnová, Zdeněk Konopásek, Lukáš Zámečník Hadwiger, Jitka Wirthová.
In Czech only
10. 9. 2025
:::: Jan Maršálek & Zdeněk Konopásek: Suspended or Sacrificed? Has the SSK’s Critical Ambition Undermined its Research Programme?
Presentation at the STS-CH Conference “Holding Things Together? Change, Continuity, Critique?” on 10–12th September, 2025
Because of its often technical focus, the critical edge of the sociology of scientific knowledge as it was promoted from the 1970s to the 1990s can easily be overlooked. For many observers of this classic period of SSK, discussions about its relativism, of which the so-called Science Wars were an important culmination, have ended up by obscuring the real target of its critical stance, i.e. the public image of science and its guarantor, the philosophy of science. This was indeed the situation to which Bruno Latour and Harry Collins, each in his own way, responded in 2002 and 2004 in their famous texts "The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience" and "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” In a series of short papers and a subsequent discussion, we will ask whether the critical programme of the classical SSK can be regarded as a futile and regrettable casualty of the Science Wars. We will consider whether it could still prove its viability within STS, which has since reconfigured its critical competence, and perhaps beyond, for example in the field of general science education. Would it be an exaggeration to say that the original critical agenda of the SSK is becoming even more relevant in our societies, precisely because they are lamenting the loss of the togetherness and unity, the building of which has always been the primary research interest of the SSK?
10. 9. 2025
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek & Jan Maršálek: Collins and Latour: Untangling the disappearance of SSK
Presentation at the STS-CH Conference “Holding Things Together? Change, Continuity, Critique?” on 10–12th September, 2025
To reflect upon the current situation in the STS field we should not overlook the strange disappearance of one of its predecessors, namely sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) – i.e., the detailed sociological study of how scientific facts or truths are being achieved by means of collective scientific practices. This subdiscipline has never been openly refuted or abandoned by STS practitioners, its authors are considered classics today, but still it almost vanished from the journals it once dominated. What actually happened? There are many possible explanations. In this paper, we will discuss Collins' argument, namely that the popularity of Latourian ANT is responsible for this development and that the critical agenda of science studies needs to be reformulated within the so-called third wave. We will also examine the Latour’s response to that time situation (esp. in his article Why has critique run out of steam?, 2004), which we read as an attempt to find a way to explain anew and continue his own program. We will conclude by considering the subsequent trajectories of both Collins’s and Latour’s work in relation to SSK and by a critical discussion of whether and why we miss SSK today.
9. 9. 2025
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Engaged impartiality? Science and Politics in the Anthropocene from the STS perspective
Presentation for the Summer school "Anthropocene: Contemporary world in a transdisciplinary perspective" organised by CTS in September 2025, Prague
24. 6. 2025
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Towards science and politics in Anthropocene
Environmental Law and Politics between Skepticism and Activism, Online round table
13. 4. 2025
:::: Když jemnost vypadá jako bezmoc: O vědě a politice pod tlakem [When subtlety looks like helplessness: On science and politics under pressure]
Presentation at the EDO 2025, in Olomouc-Sluňákov
[in Czech only]
18. 11. 2024
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Analytic software as a "research tool": Revisiting epistemology of qualitative social sciences
Presentation for the workshop Thinking Technical Objects as Epistemological Details, Paris, November 18-19, 2024
5. 10. 2024
:::: Přesahy a překlady [Overlaps and translations]
Discussion with Miroslav Petříček, laureate of the Vision 97 Prize for 2024, Prague, Prague Crossroads, 10/05/202. Together with Alice Koubová, Tereza Matějčková, Cyril Říha and Josef Fulka
9. 9. 2024
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Angažovaná nezaujatost? Věda a politika v antropocénu [Committed disinterestedness? Science and politics in Anthropocene]
Presentation for the Summer school "Anthropocene: Contemporary world in a transdisciplinary perspective" organised by CTS in September 2024, Prague
21. 4. 2024
:::: What is at stake in politics? Many things simultaneously, always
Presentation at the EDO 2024, in Olomouc-Sluňákov
[in Czech only]
24. 1. 2024
:::: Scientific literacy as a civic competence
Participation in the workshop (Praha, Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences)
[in Czech only]
7. 12. 2023
:::: Science Studies in the Classroom
Participation in the workshop (Praha, Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences)
[in Czech only]
30. 11. 2023
:::: Round Table: Philosophy of Science and Science and Technology Studies through the Lens of Technology
Participation in the Czech-French scientific debate (Praha, 30.11.-2.12. 2023)
On the international scene, the separation between 'STS' and philosophy of science
seems more marked than ever. Since the great controversies between relativists and
realists in the 1980s and the Science Wars of the 1990s, the two communities have
drifted far apart, and in a sense beyond dissensus. However, a good part of STS
specialists could benefit from a philosophical perspective on their work, and vice
versa, philosophers of science from a better understanding of problems that have
long haunted the history and sociology of science as well as STS.
