“The Politics of Pure Science” Revisited (original) (raw)
Related papers
2020
The post-WWII era represents the genesis of science policy, as we understand it today. Its importance is augmented on account that other nations took the United States as a standard to which they measured their own efforts. In this thesis, I hypothesize that (1) the shape of postwar science policy in the US was a result of ‘basic research ideology,’ a coherent set of interrelated propositions regarding the university system, government-science relations, and an economic theory of basic science. As corollaries, I also hypothesize that (2) the primary impetus behind the first successful development of a national science policy was WWII and that (3) the notion of national interests in university-based science was a result of basic research ideology. The core tenets of basic research ideology became a post-war consensus, while its operational extensions were debated and negotiated between groups of political and academic rivals. In explaining this, I also introduce the concept of the ‘bureaucrato-scientific field’ to demonstrate the unique paradoxical logic of science policy. To carry this out, I principally rely on Bourdieu’s field theory, focusing on the shifting boundaries of fields and how these have changed the social structure. In this regard, the thesis is one of the rare attempts to bring Bourdieusian relationalism to science and technology studies.
What is Basic Research? Insights from Historical Semantics (open access)
For some years now, the concept of basic research has been under attack. Yet although the significance of the concept is in doubt, basic research continues to be used as an analytical category in science studies. But what exactly is basic research? What is the difference between basic and applied research? This article seeks to answer these questions by applying historical semantics. I argue that the concept of basic research did not arise out of the tradition of pure science. On the contrary, this new concept emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when scientists were being confronted with rising expectations regarding the societal utility of science. Scientists used the concept in order to try to bridge the gap between the promise of utility and the uncertainty of scientific endeavour. Only after 1945, when United States science policy shaped the notion of basic research, did the concept revert to the older ideals of pure science. This revival of the purity discourse was caused by the specific historical situation in the US at that time: the need to reform federal research policy after the Second World War, the new dimension of ethical dilemmas in science and technology during the atomic era, and the tense political climate during the Cold War.
Lessons from the history of science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2011
raise a vital problem for the politics of science in today's liberal democracies: How to establish a reliable system of advice and communication between science and the public. The authors reveal social mechanisms that threaten to transform the communication of scientific knowledge into a question of marketing. Instead of evidence and argument, it is the success in selling scientific claims that decides their political impact. Merchants of Doubt has attracted great public attention because of its relevance to present debates about anthropogenic global warming. It is an interesting example of a trend in history of science to address problems of present political significance. The book links a set of case studies of scientific controversies in environmental politics to a narrative with moral and political implications. The cases cover roughly the second half of the 20 th century and range from DDT, Star Wars 1 and nuclear winter, through acid rain, the ozone hole, and cancer from smoking, to anthropogenic global warming. The authors describe how special political and economic interests can pervert public understanding of the issues by casting doubt on well-established scientific knowledge. In particular, they show how the profit interest of private enterprise can play on an ethos of balance in the mass media to confuse public opinion. Equal time to both parties in a conflict is an apparently sound liberal and democratic principle. But it can be practiced in a way that undermines the input of sound arguments and evidence in public discourse. The book, in fact, reveals a veritable conspiracy where a handful of prominent scientists, primarily physicists with a background in Cold War weapons' research, were recurrent actors. These scientists were politically on the right, and ''freedom'' was the catch-word that united the Cold War legacy with liberalist economic thinking and populist resentment against state
Long-Term Trends in the Public Representation of Science Across the 'Iron Curtain': 1946-1995
Social Studies of Science, 2006
This paper compares changing patterns of science news over a period of 50 years. The study analyses a biannual corpus of 2800 news articles in Britain (the Daily Telegraph) and 5800 in Bulgaria (Rabotnichesko Delo), and shows divergent and convergent trends. Britain carries considerably more science news than Bulgaria all through the period, while the coverage shows parallel swings: increasing intensity during the 1950s, a turning point in the early 1960s, declining into the 1970s, and rising again in the 1980s and 1990s. Media coverage in both countries shows similar swings in public appeal. The trends in the medicalization of science news, the reporting of controversy and the evaluation of science diverge in the two contexts. The paper concludes with speculative explanations of these results. Similarities and differences in these long-term trends point to common factors and specific differences at work on either sides of the (former) 'Iron Curtain'.
The meaning ofpublic understanding of science'in the United States after World War II
Public Understanding of science, 1992
In the United States after World War 11, the term 'public understanding of science' became equated with 'public appreciation of the benefits that science provides to society'. This equation was the result of the independent, but parallel, social and institutional needs of four different groups with an interest in popularizing science: commercial publishers, scientific societies, science journalists, and government apncim. A new, more critical era of popular science began in the 1960s.
Science Belongs to the People! Popularisation of science in Central Europe in the 1950s
2013
The article analyses main institutional and ideological features of the popularization of sciences in Central and Eastern Europe in 1950´s. Three societies established upon the Soviet model are analyzed: East-German Society for Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge (Gesellschaft zur Verbreitung wissenschaftlicher Kenntnisse), Czechoslovak Society for Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge (Společnost pro šíření politických a vědeckých znalostí) and Polish Society for General Knowledge (Towarzystwo Wiedzy Powszechnej).