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30 - Science, Ideology, and the State

from Part VI - Problems and Promises at the End of the Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Paul Josephson
Edited by
Mary Jo Nye
Mary Jo Nye
Affiliation:
Oregon State University
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Summary

In the past century, the state has assumed a central role in fostering the development of science. Through direct action, such as subsidies and stipends, and indirect action, such as tax incentives, the modern nation-state supports research in universities, national laboratories, institutes, and industrial firms. Political leaders recognize that science serves a variety of needs: Public health and defense are the most visible, with research on radar, jet engines, and nuclear weapons among the most widely studied. Scientists, too, understand that state support is crucial to their enterprise, for research has grown increasingly complex and expensive, involving large teams of specialists and costly apparatuses. In some countries, philanthropic organizations have underwritten expenses. In communist countries, where the state took control of private capital in the name of the worker, the government was virtually the only source of funding.

The reasons for state support of research seem universal, bridging even great differences in the ideological superstructures that frame economic and political desiderata. Some reasons are tangible, such as national security, but some are intangible, including the desire to prove the superiority of a given system and its scientists through such visible artifacts as hydropower stations, particle accelerators, and nuclear reactors. Whether we consider tangible or intangible issues, capitalist or socialist economies, authoritarian or pluralist polities, the role of the state and its ideology is crucial in understanding the genesis of modern science, its funding, institutional basis, and epistemological foundations.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 579 - 597
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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