CITOYENNETÉ ET BIENS COMMUNS DE LA SCIENCE
CITIZENSHIP AND COMMON GOODS OF SCIENCE

Summary/Abstract: The paper draws attention to the intersection of rights and powers which constitute citizenship with, on the other hand, the creation of science. In the beginning, citizenship is a separation, and even isolation; it circumscribes the rights (and lack of rights) in the interior of a country – and even of a regional structure – and opposed to the exterior (where these rights do not exist or, on the contrary, there are rights of different order). Concerning science, it is by its own nature a phenomenon transgressing the administrative separation: the scientific manner and the results of its approach to existence are global and, related to the human knowledge, they represent the human species as such. This first opposition (between the circumscribed/local citizenship and the world character of science) is followed by other ones, suggesting the evolution of the human community. The collision between the principle of fragmentation – visible at both the level of different citizenships and the history of science – and the universalism of science emphasize important meanings. One of them highlights that the logic of the present society opposes the scientifically and technologically possible common goods generated by science.

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