Science Policy As Well As The Mutual Depression Temperature War

The union of science, technology, as well as national safety took a major stride forwards during as well as next World War II. The hugge...

The union of science, technology, as well as national safety took a major stride forwards during as well as next World War II. The hugger-mugger Manhattan project, marshaling the energies as well as fourth dimension of thousands of scientists as well as engineers, showed that it was possible for military machine needs to effectively mobilize as well as ship coordinated enquiry into telephone substitution as well as applied topics, leading to the evolution of the plutonium bomb as well as eventually the hydrogen bomb. (Richard Rhodes' memorable The Making of the Atomic Bomb provides a fascinating telling of that history.) But also noteworthy is the coordinated efforts made inward advanced computing, cryptography, radar, operations research, as well as aviation. (Interesting books on several of these areas include Stephen Budiansky's Code Warriors: NSA's Codebreakers as well as the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union as well as Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats as well as Brought Science to the Art of Warfare Warfare, as well as Dyson's Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe.) Scientists served the state of war effort, as well as their piece of occupation made a fabric deviation inward the outcome. More significantly, the United States of America developed effective systems for organizing as well as directing the procedure of scientific enquiry -- decision-making processes to hit upward one's hear which avenues should hold upward pursued, bureaucracies for allocating funds for enquiry as well as development, as well as motivational structures that kept the participants involved with a high degree of commitment. Tom Hughes' rattling interesting Rescuing Prometheus: Four Monumental Projects that Changed Our World tells business office of this story.

But what well-nigh the peace?

During the Cold War at that spot was a novel global antagonism, betwixt the United States of America as well as the USSR. The price of this contest included both conventional weapons as well as nuclear weapons, as well as it was clear on all sides that the stakes were high. So what happened to the institutions of scientific as well as technical enquiry as well as evolution from the 1950s forward?

Stuart Leslie addressed these questions inward a valuable 1993 book, The Cold War as well as American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT as well as Stanford. Defense funding maintained as well as deepened the quantity of university-based enquiry that was aimed at what were deemed of import military machine priorities.

The armed forces supplemented existing academy contracts with massive appropriations for applied as well as classified research, as well as established entire novel laboratories nether academy management: MIT's Lincoln Laboratory (air defense); Berkeley's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (nuclear weapons); as well as Stanford's Applied Electronics Laboratory (electronic communications as well as countermeasures). (8)

In many disciplines, the military machine fix the prototype for postwar American science. Just as the technologies of empire (specifically submarine telegraphy as well as steam power) in 1 lawsuit defined the relevant enquiry programs for Victorian scientists as well as engineers, then the military-driven technologies of the Cold War defined the critical problems for the postwar generation of American accidents as well as engineers.... These novel challenges defined what scientists as well as engineers studied, what they designed as well as built, where they went to work, as well as what they did when they got there. (9)

And Leslie offers an institutional prediction well-nigh noesis production inward this context:

Just as Veblen could possess got predicted, as American scientific discipline became increasingly saltation upward inward a spider web of military machine institutions, then did its character, scope, as well as methods accept on new, as well as oftentimes disturbing, forms. (9)

The evidence for this prediction is offered inward the specialized chapters that follow. Leslie traces inward item the evolution of major enquiry laboratories at both universities, involving tens of millions of dollars inward funding, thousands of graduate students as well as scientists, as well as rattling carefully focused on the evolution of sensitive technologies inward radio, computing, materials, aviation, as well as weaponry.

No 1 denied that MIT had profited enormously inward those outset decades after the state of war from its military machine connections as well as from the unprecedented funding sources they provided. With those resources the Institute seat together an impressive number of highly regarded engineering programs, successful both financially as well as intellectually. There was at the same time, however, a growing awareness, fifty-fifty alongside those who had benefited most, that the cost of that success mightiness hold upward higher than anyone had imagined -- a pattern for engineering pedagogy set, organizationally as well as conceptually, past times the requirements of the national safety state. (43)

Leslie gives to a greater extent than or less attending to the counter-pressures to the military's authorisation inward enquiry universities that tin sack arise inside a republic inward the closing chapter of the book, when the anti-Vietnam War displace raised opposition to military machine enquiry on academy campuses as well as eventually led to the halt of classified enquiry on many academy campuses. He highlights the protests that occurred at MIT as well as Stanford during the 1960s; simply every bit radical protests against classified as well as military machine enquiry happened inward Madison, Urbana, as well as Berkeley.

This is a fix of issues that are rattling resonant with Science, Technology as well as Society studies (STS). Leslie is indeed a historian of scientific discipline as well as technology, simply his approach does non completely percentage the social constructivism of that approach today. His emphasis is on the implications of the funding sources on the management that enquiry inward basic scientific discipline as well as engineering took inward the 1950s as well as 1960s inward leading universities similar MIT as well as Stanford. And his basic caution is that the military machine as well as safety priorities associated with this construction all simply guaranteed that the course of report of enquiry was distorted inward directions that would non possess got been chosen inward a to a greater extent than traditional academy enquiry environment.

The volume raises a number of of import questions well-nigh the arrangement of noesis as well as the appropriate operate of universities inward scientific research. In 1 feel the Vietnam War is a ruby-red herring, because the opposition it generated inward the USA was rattling specific to that exceptional war. But most people would in all likelihood sympathise as well as back upward the sentiment that universities played a crucial operate inward World War II past times discovering as well as developing novel military machine technologies, as well as that this was an enormously of import as well as proper operate for scientists inward universities to play. Defeating fascism as well as dictatorship was an existential take away for the whole country. So the sentiment that academy enquiry is sometimes used as well as directed towards the interests of national safety is non inherently improper.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 unlike variety of worry arises on the theme of what variety of scheme is best for guiding enquiry inward scientific discipline as well as engineering towards improving the human condition. In grand terms, 1 mightiness watch whether to a greater extent than or less large fraction of the billions of dollars spent inward military machine enquiry betwixt 1950 as well as 1980 mightiness possess got been improve spent on finding ways of addressing human needs direct -- as well as thus reducing the probable futurity causes of war. Is it possible that nosotros would today hold upward inward a province of affairs inward which famine, disease, global warming, as well as ethnic as well as racial conflict were substantially eliminated if nosotros had dedicated as much attending to these issues as nosotros did to advanced nuclear weapons as well as stealth aircraft?

Leslie addresses STS direct inward "Reestablishing a Conversation inward STS: Who’s Talking? Who’s Listening? Who Cares?" (link). Donald MacKenzie's Inventing Accuracy: Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance tells business office of the same storey with a greater emphasis on the social construction of noesis throughout the process.

(I call back a demonstration at the University of Illinois against a super-computing lab inward 1968 or 1969. The demonstrators were appeased when it was explained that the reckoner was beingness used for conditions research. It was after widely rumored on the campus that the conditions enquiry inward inquiry was inward fact directed towards considering whether the conditions of Vietnam could hold upward manipulated inward a militarily useful way.)