Unpacking the grand challenges of nanotechnology

Abstract

Important societal themes, such as sustainability or the ageing society, are referred to as 'grand challenges'. During the last decade, many funding programs were set up to address these and other grand challenges. While grand challenges have a moral component – it is difficult to contest that it is 'good' to address them – they do not convey clear-cut goals for action. When they are related to the actual development of new technologies, grand challenges are articulated in different ways. Articulations help to specify and legitimate a choice for a direction of research (Van Lente and Van Til 2008). In this paper we focus on the articulation of nanotechnology. The rise of nanotechnology is surrounded by large expectations that it will provide 'solutions' for societal problems. The idea is that nanotechnology, which draws from fields like physics, chemistry, optics, engineering and biology, has a large potential for possible applications, because of the unique properties of substances at this small scale.