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Basic Research and the Social System of Pure Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Herbert A. Shepard
Herbert A. Shepard*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Extract

In Executive Order No. 10521, March 17, 1954, President Eisenhower stated: “…only a small fraction of the Federal Funds is being used to stimulate and support the vital basic research which makes possible our practical scientific progress. I believe strongly that this Nation must extend its support of research in basic science.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 1956 , pp. 48 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © 1956, The Williams & Wilkins Company

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References

1 Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier, U. S. Government Printing Office, July 1945, p. 15.

2 Don K. Price, Government and Science, New York University Press, 1954, p. 56.

3 Important exceptions are: R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, Part IV; Frank Hartung, “Sociological Foundations of Modern Science,” Philosophy of Science, 1946; Talcott Parsons, The Social System, Ch. VIII.

4 In general and somewhat oversimplified terms, a social system is a group whose members are interdependent in connection with achieving a goal, or expressing a set of values, that they share. Jobs for members are defined for achieving the goal and for maintaining the group. Criteria of good and bad are associated with job performance: the conduct of members is guided by “conscience” and by a system of reward and punishment. Some or all of the jobs in the group have to do with providing subsistence for members, recruitment and training of new members, and otherwise maintaining the integrity of the group in its social and physical environment. Some stability and autonomy are thereby provided for the system.

5 The Committee on Institutional Research Policy, Sponsored Research Policy of Colleges and Universities, American Council on Education, Washington, D. C., 1954.

6 J. B. Conant, Modern Science and Modern Man, Columbia University Press, 1952.

7 Controlled observation without manipulation of variables and conditions is an equally important means in many sciences. From the standpoint of internal social control, the dynamics are much the same.

8 The Lancet, Nov. 20, 1948, p. 827.

9 For J. W. N. Sullivan, the social irrelevance of scientific work has been the mainstay of science: “But the matters with which science has hitherto been concerned are comparatively indifferent to us. For that reason, science has been so successful. … The splendid moral integrity manifested in scientific work, therefore, is due very largely to the nature of scientific material. … Science is truthful because it has practically no temptation to be anything else.” J. W. N. Sullivan, The Limitations of Science (The Viking Press, 1933) pp. 174–75. Mentor Books edition.

10 J. B. Conant, op. cit.

11 F. R. Kluckhohn: “Dominant and Substitute Profiles of Cultural Orientation.” Social Forces, 28, 1948.