Abstract
The chapter examines the approach to Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and traces back its roots in the debate on nanotechnology. RRI is presented as an integrative approach to current available instruments to shape science and technology and a multi-fold understanding of responsibility is introduced, which acknowledges three interested dimensions (epistemical, empirical and normative) in responsibility. The chapter then examines how, historically, the RRI notion emerged in the context of the nanotechnology debate from the National Nanotechnology Initiative of the U.S. on and it was then taken up by European nanotechnology policy. The debate on the Code of Conduct for nanotechnology research and development set in practice by the European Parliament is presented as a landmark in this process and the ‘career’ of RRI up to the new European research framework programme Horizon2020 is then recalled. The chapter supports the view that the emerging debate on the ethics of nanotechnology, as a new and emerging technology promising revolutionary potential but also unclear risk, contributed to the shape of the broader notion of RRI.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Because of this history we will give more emphasis to the emergence of the RRI idea in the field of nanotech later on in this chapter (Sect. 12.4).
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- 4.
This Section goes in parts back to the review of the history of the nanotech and ethics debate given in Grunwald (2011b).
- 5.
The criticism on the ‘speculative nano-ethics’ (Nordmann 2007) was, in a sense, a rather late reflection on this situation.
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Grunwald, A. (2014). Responsible Research and Innovation: An Emerging Issue in Research Policy Rooted in the Debate on Nanotechnology. In: Arnaldi, S., Ferrari, A., Magaudda, P., Marin, F. (eds) Responsibility in Nanotechnology Development. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 13. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9103-8_12
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