French intellectual culture, from its Enlightenment heritage, is deeply imbued with a positivist approach to human problems. Modern science and technology are simply assumed to be the proper expressions of human reason. Under such assumptions it would be meaningless to consider the possibility that either science or technology could be intrinsically problematic or that it would be appropriate to try to identify proper limits to their development. Instead, for more than a century the main philosophical debate raised by scientific and technological progress dealt with conflicting political responses to extrinsic problems, such as the uses of technology to exploit the working class.

In France, moreover, academic life is highly centralized and, as a result of their selection and training, professional intellectuals tend to live in a world situated between the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne. Such a context favors the reproduction of existing problems...