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Science Policy and Its Myths

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Jean-Jacques Salomon

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The destiny of our age is rationalisation, intellectualisation and, above all, a disenchantment with the world. The success of science as a technique of forecasting has broken a spell; there is no longer a complete image of the world that can be revealed by rational knowledge. Scientific activity is no royal road to the gods, nor to the essence of the world, nor to the truth of nature lying hidden behind its outward appearances; the spell of mysterious powers to be discovered or invoked has died away with the multiplication and the success of objective, neutral, purely technical instruments for the mastery of natural phenomena. If science robs the world of enchantment, it is because it offers only instrumental answers to the questions we ask of it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 18 , Issue 70 , June 1970 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 See Max Weber, "La vocation du Savant," in Le Savant et le Politique, Paris, Plon, 1959, pp. 105-106.

2 "The national accounts only show goods and services which are effectively exchanged or capable of being exchanged, on the market." (Comptes de la Nation, Paris, Ministère des Finances, 1960, Vol. 2, Méthodes, p. 150). The American definition is not very different: "The fundamental criterion used to define an activity as economic production is that which is reflected in the transactions of buying and selling on the market." (National Income Supplement 1954 to the Survey of Current Business, Washington, p. 30).

3 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, Boston, Mass., Beacon Press, 1966, especially Chapter 7.

4 Harvey Brooks, "Can Science be Planned," Problems of Science Policy, OECD, Paris, 1964, pp. 97.

5 Ibid., p. 97.

6 Andrew Shonfield, Modern Capitalism, Oxford University Press, (Translated from the French version)

7 Ibid.

8 Pierre Massé, Le Plan ou l'Anti-Hasard, Paris, Gallimard, 1965.

9 See in particular David Novick, Program Budgeting: Program Analysis and the Federal Budget, Boston, Harvard University Press, 1965. The Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS) is now being applied in France under the name of "Rationalisation des choix budgétaires" (RCB).

10 Charles J. Hitch and Roland N. McKean, The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age, Harvard University Press, 1960, re-edited by Atheneum, New York, 1965, p. 2.

11 Ibid., p. 3.

12 Ibid., p. 2.

13 Raymond Aron, "Applying First Principles," in Decision Making in National Science Policy, a CIBA Foundation and Science of Science Foundation symposium, London, J. & A. Churchill Ltd., 1968, p. 288.

14 Christopher Freeman, "Science and Economy at the National Level," in Problems of Science Policy, OECD, Paris, 1968, p. 59-60.

15 For this example and others, see René Taton, Reason and Chance in Scientific Discovery, New York, Hutchinson, 1957.

16 Not only were the technical difficulties under-estimated, but above all, the theoretical problems linked with plasma physics were ignored in the programming of projects (cf. H. Roderick, "Fundamental Research and Applied Research and Development," Introduction, in Problems of Science Policy, OECD, Paris, 1968, p. 91).

17 J. Schmookler, Invention and Economic Growth, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1966, p. 215. On the determinist ideas of invention see especially S. C. Gilfillan, The Sociology of Invention, Chicago, Follet Publishing Co. 1935, and above all R. K. Merton's article, "The Role of the Genius in Scientific Advances," in The New Scientist, London, November 2nd, 1961, p. 306.

18 " It is misleading to say that primacy in military research and development can give us only lead time. This may be enough to prevent or ‘win' a war, and, for a nation on the strategic defensive, it is essential to avoid defeat." (Charles J. Hitch and Roland N. McKean, The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age cit., p. 245).

19 Ibid., p. 249.

20 Gaston Berger, " La Prospective", 1957, in Phénoménologie du Temps et Prospective, Paris, P.U.F., 1967, p. 221.

21 The annual investments of American enterprises in R. & D. institutes and firms are valued at more than $65 million for technological forecasts alone. See Eric Jantsch, Technological Forecasting in Perspective, OECD, Paris, 1967, pp. 251-253 and 272.

22 Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, Weidenfeld, 1967.

23 Ibid., p. 358.

24 See Les Utopies de la Renaissance, Paris, P.U.F., 1963.

25 Donald A. Schon, " Forecasting and Technological Forecasting," in "Toward the Year 2000: Work in Progress," Daedalus, Boston, Summer 1967, p. 765.

26 Gilbert Simondon, Du Mode d'existence des objets techniques, Paris, Aubier-Montaigne, 1969, in particular pp. 154-158.

27 The " Delphi method" is the best known example of procedures which do not conceal the fact that they are primarily based on intuition. Carefully programmed questions on the technological trend in a given field are put to a group of experts, and their replies collated with information obtained from outside; these "brainstorming" sessions are then computerised. The result is a table of forecasted technological breakthroughs, following a timetable composed of intervals of probabilities arrived at by reasonable agreement among the experts. As for technological forecasting methods which try to reduce the role of intuition by the use of different mathematical tools (matrices, similation, scenarios, input-output tables, etc.,) it is obvious that they cannot do without preliminary enquiry from experts. On the "Delphi method," see T. J. Gordon and Olaf Helmer, Report on a Long-Range Forecasting Study, Report p. 2982, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, September 1964; on the other methods see Erich Jantsch, Technological Forecasting in Perspective, OECD, Paris, 1967, second part, Chapters 3 and. 4.

28 Erich Jantsch, Technological Forecasting in Perspective cit., p. 15.

29 For example, when it places on the same plane methods whose degree of assurance is very different, or treats facts as established, which are not. Thus one reads that " only two countries have so far established a framework in which technological forecasting can be used systematically to aid national planning: France and the United States." It is not the "only" which shocks, but the assertion that such a framework has ever existed in France or the United States. E. Jantsch, Technological Forecasting in Perspective cit., p. 279.

30 Jean Bayet, Histoire politique et psychologique de la religion romaine, Paris, Payot, 1957, pp. 51-60 and Raymond Bloch, Les prodiges dans l'Antiquité Classique, Paris, P.U.F., 1963, 3rd part.

31 Jean Bayet, op. cit., p. 102.

32 Henri Bergson, "Le Possible et le Réel," 1930, in La pensée et le mouvant, Paris, P.U.F., 1950, p. 110.

33 Donald A. Schon, " Forecasting and Technological Forecasting," in Daedalus, already quoted, p. 767. See his Technology and Change, New York, Delta Book, 1967.

34 "There is one quality more important than 'know-how,' and we cannot accuse the United States of any undue amount of it. This is ‘know-what' by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes but what our purposes are to be." Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of the Human Beings, New York, Avon Books, 1967, pp. 250-251.

35 Jean Bayet, op. cit., p. 55.

36 Hasan Ozbekhan, The Idea of a "Look-Out" Institution, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, California, March 1965, cited by Jantsch, Technological Forecasting in Perspective, p. 244.

37 E. Kant, "The Conflict of the Faculties," in the pamphlets on The Philosophy of History, Paris, Aubier-Montaigne, 1947.

38 Olaf Helmer, Social Technology, New York, Basic Books, 1966 and Hasan Ozbekhan, Technology and Man's Future report SP-2494, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, California, 27th May 1966.

39 Erich Jantsch, Technological Forecasting in Perspective cit. p. 60. See also of the same: "Technological Forecasting—A Tool for a Dynamic Science Policy," in Problems of Science Policy, Paris, OECD, 1964, pp. 113-123.

40 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Chicago Press, 1962. In many respects Kuhn's "anomalies" recall the "epistemological obstacles" of Bachelard in La formation de l'esprit scientifique (Paris, Vrin, 1938, p. 91). But just as the idea of "paradigm" is vague, so that "of the epistemological obstacle" is precise, and rich to the point of being the principle which explains the "anomalies" themselves.

41 Thomas S. Kuhn, op. cit., p. 170.

42 Ibid.

43 See Georges Canguilhem, Etudes d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences, Paris, Vrin, 1968, Introduction, p. 15, referring to the dialogue between Alexandre Koyré and Henry Guerlac at the Conference at Oxford, July 1961, where Guerlac accused Koyré of being an "idealist" that is to say of regarding scientific activity purely as a theoretical activity and giving to the facts of the history of sciences a reality independent of the social context. (Henry Guerlac, Some Historical Assumptions of the History of Science, reproduced in Scientific Change, A. C. Crombie, ed., London, 1963, pp. 797-812, and the reply of Alexandre Koyré in Etudes d'histoire de la pensée scientifique, Paris, P.U.F., 1966, pp. 352-361.

44 Jantsch, moreover, contrasts Kunhn's views with those of R.G.H. Siu who proposes, in The Tao of Science, the addition to Western knowledge founded on reason of certain elements of piercing the mysteries of nature (op. cit., pp. 59-61). Scientific creation would be "the fluorescence of non-knowledge," neither rational nor intuitive, but communion. There is no better illustration than this reference of the para-scientific-divinatory-terrain of techno logical forecasting; one could ask oneself what practical advantage the techno logical forecasters would derive from it. See R.G.H. Siu, The Tao of Science, M.I.T. Press, 1964, in particular Chapter 9.

45 Op. cit. p. 57.

46 Relying on the conclusions of " Project Hindsight," Jantsch writes: "The absence of normative thinking has been found to render fundamental research quite useless for the purpose of American defense developments" (Authors italics; Technological Forecasting cit. p. 54).

In the first place it is not true, and secondly and above all it is clear that the definition of the useful becomes the pretext here for the retrospective definition of the probable. On the " Project Hindsight," see C.W. Sherwin and alii, First Interim Report, Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information, Washington, 1966.