Abstract
In the past half century, science has moved from the periphery of social affairs into the centre. Public policies for research and development in basic science, and in a wide range of science-based technologies, are of perceptible weight in national and international politics. Technical experts with scientific qualifications have become major actors in public affairs. [1] Attitudes towards scientific innovations and their possible effects on the quality of life determine the fate of political parties and influence the direction of economic development in many countries. [2]
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References
Like many other statements in this paper, this scarcely needs to be backed up with a formal citation. A useful reference from the voluminous literature on this subject is Advice and Dissent: Scientists in the Political Arena by J. Primack and F. von Hippel (New York, 1974).
L. Winner, in Daedalus, 109, 121–136 (Winter 1980) makes the point by asking ‘Do Artifacts have Politics?’
J.M. Ziman, Minerva. 16, 4–19 (1978) ‘Solidarity within the Republic of Science’.
This was the underlying issue in the debates on planning and freedom in science — see, e.g. W. McGucken. Minerva, 16, 42–72 (1978) ‘On Freedom and Planning in Science: The Society for Freedom in Science, 1940–46’.
For comprehensive reviews of all these developments, see Science, Technology and Society: A Cross Disciplinary Perspective, edited by I. Spiegel-Rösing and D. de Solla Price (London: 1978).
This applies even to such high-brow publications as the issues of Daedalus devoted to ‘Limits of Scientific Inquiry’ (Spring 1978) and ‘Modern Technology: Problem or Opportunity’ (Winter 1980).
As, for example, between ‘Popperian’ and ‘Kuhnian’ views on scientific epistemology, or on the status of the ‘Mertonian norms’ in the internal sociology of science.
The importance of taking this comprehensive view in science education is emphasized in my forthcoming book Teaching and Learning about Science and Society (Cambridge University Press: to be published where many of the arguments of the present paper are set out at length.
This is the point of view adopted without question in most official publications, such as, for example, the various surveys of national research systems published by OECD.
As typified, for example, in the ‘Rothschild Report’ advocating reforms in the ‘Framework for Government Research and Development’ (London: HMSO Cmnd 4814, 1971), and in almost all the public debate that it occasioned.
This applies to almost all that is said about environmental protection, technology assessment, etc.
Including almost all those writing from a Marxist or neo-Marxist standpoint.
The standard historical cases are electromagnetism and nuclear physics.
Two of the most influential books in the recent swing away from epistemological positivism — The Logic of Scientific Discovery by K.R. Popper (English translation, London 1959) and Patterns of Discovery by N.R. Hanson (Cambridge, 1958) - indicate in their titles that they lie entirely within the framework of the ‘discovery’ model.
The more closely one investigates the psychological dimension in research, the larger loom the non-logical criteria discussed by G. Holton in Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought (Cambridge, Mass. 1973).
This case is discussed briefly in The Force of Knowledge by J.M. Ziman (Cambridge, 1976) pp 188–192.
Conjectures and Refutations, by K.R. Popper (London 1963).
The Scientific Community by W.O. Hagstrom (New York 1965).
The Sociology of Science by R.K. Merton (Chicago, 1973), pp 267–278 ‘The Normative Structure of Science’.
A functional interpretation of these norms and institutions as a means of arriving freely at a rational consensus was put forward in Public Knowledge, by J.M. Ziman (Cambridge, 1968), following ideas from Personal Knowledge by M. Polanyi (London 1958).
Never more eloquently expressed than by Ludwik Fleck in his neglected masterpiece The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. (1955: English translation, Chicago 1979).
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by T.S. Kuhn (Chicago 1962).
Reliable Knowledge: an exploration of the grounds for belief in science by J.M. Ziman (Cambridge, 1978).
Communication in Science by A.J. Meadows (London, 1974).
Citation Indexing by E. Garfield (New York, 4979).
R.K. Merton, ibid, pp 439–459 ‘The Matthew Effect in Science’.
Despite all such endeavours, unpredictable accidents will always occur: see The Acceptability of Risks by the Council for Science and Society (London 1977)
Nowhere better stated than by M. Polanyi in Personal knowledge, and, more briefly in Minerva, 1, 53–73 (1962) ‘The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory’.
The political character of organized science is discussed in Science and Politics by J.-J. Salomon (London, 1973).
This is taken for granted in Scientific Productivity: The effectiveness of research groups in six countries, edited by F.M. Andrews (Cambridge, 1979) which reports the results of an immense sociological investigation, sponsored by UNESCO, covering a wide range of academic and industrial research.
The distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ criteria of scientific choice is made by A. Weinberg in Reflections on Big Science (Cambridge, Mass. 1967).
And was largely respected even in countries, such as the Soviet Union, ruled by quite a different social philosophy — see, e.g. Soviet Science by Zh. A. Medvedev (New York, 1978).
See, for example, The Force of Knowledge, pp 210–239.
The implications of increasing instrumental sophistication are analysed by N. Rescher in Scientific Progress (Pittsburgh, 1978).
Science Development: The Building of Science in Less Developed Countries by M.J. Moravcsik (Bloomington Ind. 1975).
The important distinction between research and technical work is made by J.R. Ravetz in Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (Oxford, 1971).
Reliable Knowledge pp 60–64.
This convergence is not yet complete. The UNESCO project (note 30) began with the assumption that the social structure of research units was the same in all types of R and D: they were apparently slightly disconcerted to discover that there seem to be such typological distinctions between, say, academic and industrial research that ‘the possibility of identifying a single structural model capable of assisting science policy makers is . . . open to question’ (p.393). What is revealing is not the fact but the hypothesis that it disconfirmed.
J.M. Ziman, Minerva, 10, 384–388 (1972) ‘Can Scientific Knowledge be an Economic Category’.
Most eloquently expressed by E. Shils, Minerva, 17, 129–177 (1979) ‘ “Render unto Caesar ...”. Government, Society and the Universities in their Reciprocal Rights and Duties’.
Even in the Soviet Union, where the official philosophy is that all science is the instrument of the state, the Academy of Sciences is still allowed considerable autonomy in the lines of research to be pursued by basic scientists.
By thus referring to R and D systems in the plural, I avoid the implication that Science is a single social institution, and suggest rather that research is a characteristic social process that may manifest itself in a variety of distinct corporate forms.
The Force of Knowledge pp 146–179.
Characteristically, when Britain set out to produce nuclear weapons for itself, after the Second World War, one of the major components of the project, the Harwell laboratory, was established as near as possible on ‘academic’ lines — see Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy by M. Gowing (London, 1974).
The Force of Knowledge pp 180–209.
Deciding about Energy Policy by the Council for Science and Society (London, 1979).
Although the Royal Society stretches between these extremes, it is heavily weighted towards the more academic scientific disciplines. If it were to follow the U.S. example and set up a separate ‘National Academy of Engineering’, this would not be because science and technology had drifted further apart but because this traditional institution could not accommodate itself to the shift of science towards greater involvement in technology in recent decades.
This may be verified by a glance at almost any programme of ‘Science Policy Research’.
see e.g. The Sources of Invention by J. Jewkes et al. (London, 1969) Wealth from Knowledge by J. Langrish et al (London, 1972).
A recent collection of typical papers on such matters is to be found in Theory of Knowledge and Science Policy edited by W. Callebaut, M. de Mey, R. Pinxten and F. Vandamme (Ghent, 1979).
The Patchwork Mouse by J. Hixson (New York, 1976).
I have not yet found a satisfactory analytical account of this subject, on which there is, of course, a vast bulk of primary material in the form of government reports and journalistic commentaries. Perhaps the main reason why such an account has not yet been written is that it would need these new conceptions of Science to make sense!
J.M. Ziman, Atevv Scientist, 21 Sept. 1978, 650–651 ‘Research as if relevance matters.’
Scholarly Freedom and Human Rights by the Council for Science and Society and the British Institute of Human Rights (London, 1977).
The historical realities of transnational science are detailed in Les Scientifiques et la Paix, by B. Schroeder-Gudhus.
See, e.g. the presidential address to the American Physical Society by L.M. Branscomb, Physics Today, April 1980, 42–50.
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Ziman, J.M. (1983). Conceptions of Science. In: Holzner, B., Knorr, K.D., Strasser, H. (eds) Realizing Social Science Knowledge. Institut für Höhere Studien — Institute for Advanced Studies IHS-Studies. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-41492-7_13
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