Hubble, trouble, toil and space rubble: The management history of an object in space

This article tells the saga of the Hubble Space Telescope, and how the attempt to overcome the restrictions Earths atmosphere imposes upon astronomy, came to dominate the existence of NASA in the later part of the 20th century.This biography of an object is told over four stages fundamental to the order of management; development, failure, recovery and completion.With a failed mirror, what became hidden and forgotten, was once more revealed.With the wild and uncertain dimension of Hubble’s assemblage disclosing itself through malfunction, management was able to rescue through repair its prior unavailability. Eventually management has contended with Hubble’s demise as it fades out of view during the process of completion. Running in counterpart to the four stages of Hubble’s life will be an explication of the events using the work of Martin Heidegger, particularly his work and concepts of Being and Time (Heidegger, 1962)

A social science framework for the analysis of health technology regulation: the risks and benefits of innovative pharmaceuticals in a comparative context

This article proposes a social scientific methodology for the investigation of the regulation of the risks (and benefits) of pharmaceuticals in an international comparative context. To do this, it examines the philosophical presuppositions that are necessary for the production of social scientific knowledge; the relationships between epistemology, concept formation and empirical research design; and the generation of hypotheses and selection of research methods, by reference to the ontological status of the research object. It is concluded that objectivist realism provides a philosophically coherent framework for empirical social scientific research on the regulation of technological risks, which can be useful to citizenship and public health without being instrumentally technocratic, whereas relativism is philosophically self-defeating and can only be useful in spite of itself