Some Recent Trends in Science

Abstract

In this chapter I sketch some general tends in the scientific enterprise the last 50 years or so. The first is the expansion of scientific research and the increasing flood of scientific papers being published in an ever-increasing pace. The amount of information is enormous. An individual scientist can only read a very small proportion of papers, even if he/she restrict reading to a very narrow speciality. Hence, most papers are never read by anyone except the referees and this tendency seems to increase rapidly. But researchers continue to publish papers (all are aware of ‘publish or perish’) in spite of the fact that the impact of most papers is nil.

The second trend is the increased tendency to think of research funding in terms of investments. Governments and other research funding bodies naturally want to allocate funding to the most promising projects and have tried to develop methods for doing that. But the very idea of planning and predicting the outcome of research seems to be almost a case of contradiction in terms; one cannot know in advance which research projects will be successful.

The third trend is towards bigger and bigger research projects requiring hundreds of researchers and staff and running for long periods.

The forth is the increasing predictive power of science, and using best available knowledge when deciding what to do is arguably the optimal way to achieve one’s goals. But a thoroughgoing scientific attitude is in some people’s minds in conflict with their desire for meaning and purpose of life; if everything is determined by laws and initial conditions, the knowledge of which enables predictions, there is nothing mysterious left and no room for explanations in terms of goals an purposes.