What is so special about science? Taking up a venerable epistemological challenge, this book rephrases the question of scientific autonomy beyond conventional essentialist criteria of demarcation between science and society. The specificity of science is primarily sought in its studied 'lack of haste', its socially sanctioned withdrawal from everyday life and from 'faster' cultures such as politics and business. This 'unhastened' quality defines science's peculiar delaying tactics, which systematically slow down and objectify ordinary conversations, actions, and conflicts, attracting 'slow' personalities who read and write more and talk less than the 'fast cats' of more decisionist, stress-driven and hasty cultures. This description, rather than claiming performative innocence, simultaneously expresses the ambition to champion what it characterizes: to liberate science from the stress and haste that are increasingly imposed upon it by the 'external' pressures and performance criteria of enterprise culture and political correctness, and by the growing impact of media publicity and the academic celebrity system. Unhastening Science advances a new factual description of the specificity of scientific practice and a new normative/political project to enhance scientific and intellectual autonomy.