Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 30 June 1967:
Vol. 156. no. 3783, pp. 1699 - 1705
DOI: 10.1126/science.156.3783.1699
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Articles

The Pure-Science Ideal and Democratic Culture

George H. Daniels 1

1 Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

These early experiences of pure scientists will have an unmistakable ring of familiarity to anyone familiar with the current situation. Charles Sanders Peirce, with characteristic insight, had stated the fundamental dilemma of the pure scientist operating within a democratic framework. How can one ask the public to provide support, much less facilities, for the intellectual gratification of one select group? A part of the answer, of course, is simply that one cannot. As long as a group is dependent upon public support it must seek some means of contact with the values of the enveloping society, and the moment it does this it departs in some measure from the ideal purity. The schizophrenic attitude described by Dubos therefore became a professional necessity as soon as the new ideal was adopted. Since the time of Gould, scientists have been able to tell each other that the man who based science's claim to support on grounds of immediate practical utility was "no loyal follower and true friend of science" and, at the same time, to trust that the popularizers and technicians would convey a different message to the public. On the whole, they have not been disappointed in their expectation, and there has been little need for them to go beyond the standard formula : Utility is not to be a test of scientific work, but all knowledge will ultimately prove useful. Since the continued existence of scientists in this society depends upon the believability of that vague claim, there is little likelihood hood that the schizophrenia will disappear.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
The Linear Model of Innovation: The Historical Construction of an Analytical Framework.
B. Godin (2006)
Science Technology Human Values 31, 639-667
   Abstract »    PDF »
Organizing Credibility: Discursive and Organizational Orthodoxy on the Borders of Ecology and Politics.
A. J. Kinchy and D. L. Kleinman (2003)
Social Studies of Science 33, 869-896
   Abstract »    PDF »
Measuring Science: is there "Basic Research" without Statistics?.
B. Godin (2003)
Social Science Information 42, 57-90
   Abstract »    PDF »
A cognitive approach to relevance of science.
A. Rip (1997)
Social Science Information 36, 615-640
   Abstract »
The Changing Ecology of United States Science.
R. Byerly Jr. and R. A. Pielke Jr. (1995)
Science 269, 1531-1532
   PDF »
Technical innovation and the universities: divisions of labour in cosmopolitan technical regimes.
C. Disco, A. Rip, and B. van der Meulen (1992)
Social Science Information 31, 465-507
Edison and the Pure Science Ideal in 19th-Century America.
D. A. Hounshell (1980)
Science 207, 612-617
   Abstract »    PDF »
The professionalization of American anthropology: A case study in the sociology of knowledge.
R. Darnell (1971)
Social Science Information 10, 83-103
Research, Development, and the Improvement of Education.
H. D. Gideonse (1968)
Science 162, 541-545
   PDF »
Physics and the Polity: Are physics and society on divergent courses?.
H. Brooks (1968)
Science 160, 396-400
   PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)