Mode 2

Abstract

The Latin word modus is often translated simply as "manner".It originally meant "measure, weight", but is also etymologically related to the diminutive modulus, meaning "scale, small measure" and "model" (Müller 2009, 638).There is little evidence in the research literature on Mode 2 that the word describes a model of science.Such an interpretation is obvious, because the differences between the two modes of science, which are the starting point of the discussion, can be understood primarily in terms of ideal types (Nowotny 1993, 70; Schauz 2014, 49): Mode 2, for example, stands for forms of knowledge creation that take place under the inf luence of industrial technology developments, and public-and private-sector organizations and state institutions involved in them, and bear the character of application-oriented, practice-integrated, and cross-disciplinary research.Consequently, the scientific aspiration to overcome contradictions in knowledge recedes into the background while practical solutions come to the fore.Mode 2 stops when a practical solution is found and implemented.Mode 2 indicates the historical development of knowledge societies, whose knowledge -according to Max Weber (1934) -is distinguished from impartial, value-, and contradiction-free knowledge and rather finds recognition through its robustness and functionality in transformation processes.Mode 1, on the other hand, is regarded as the product of basic research, which can also refrain from practical solutions and decisions within the protected framework of universities and research institutions.The two modes thus become ideal-types, distinguishable as models of science.Regardless of whether ideals (such as that of unbiased and contradiction-free knowledge) have actually been fulfilled, they become for Mode 1 one of its essential characteristics.Furthermore, it is said that Mode 1 and 2 do indeed coexist and interact in real terms (Gibbons et al. 1994, 9).What belongs to this or that mode is to be distinguished analytically.