The Forgotten Dimension of the Mission of the University. The Problem of the Social Authority of Science

Abstract

Redefining the mission of the 21st century university and effectively fulfilling the so-called ,,third mission” – the public service – is a question primarily of tools, not of the mission itself. For this reason, the present contribution will analyse the problem of authority in science, the problem of social trust in people of science, and, finally, the link between the idea of civil society and the public sphere with the changes in the ethos of the scientist. In documents, projects, and texts on the social responsibility of science published in the last decade, the most attention is paid to relations with the economic environment, cooperation with external stakeholders, and adapting students to the labor market at the expense of marginalizing other tasks of the university. The aim of this work is therefore to emphasize the complementarity between the implementation of tasks related to science and teaching and co-shaping the civil society, which results both from the principles of the ethos of the scientist and the tradition of the ethos of intelligentsia present in all types of democracy in the history of Poland.