Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation |
| Author: Donald E. Stokes
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Category: Book
Buy New: $58.30
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1535548
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 180
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0815781784
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.97306
EAN: 9780815781783
ASIN: 0815781784
Publication Date: June 1997
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Book Description
Over fifty years ago,Vannevar Bush released his enormously influential report, Science, the Endless Frontier, which asserted a dichotomy between basic and applied science. This view was at the core of the compact between government and science that led to the golden age of scientific research after World War II--a compact that is currently under severe stress. In this book, Donald Stokes challenges Bush's view and maintains that we can only rebuild the relationship between government and the scientific community when we understand what is wrong with that view.
Stokes begins with an analysis of the goals of understanding and use in scientific research. He recasts the widely accepted view of the tension between understanding and use, citing as a model case the fundamental yet use-inspired studies by which Louis Pasteur laid the foundations of microbiology a century ago. Pasteur worked in the era of the "second industrial revolution," when the relationship between basic science and technological change assumed its modern form. Over the subsequent decades, technology has been increasingly science-based. But science has been increasingly technology-base--with the choice of problems and the conduct of research often inspired by societal needs. An example is the work of the quantum-effects physicists who are probing the phenomena of semiconductors from the time of the transistor's discovery after World War II.
On this revised, interactive view of science and technology, Stokes builds a convincing case that by recognizign the importance of use-inspired basic research we can frame a new compact between science and government. His conclusions have major implications for both the scientific and policy communities and will be of great interest to those in the broader public who are troubled by the current role of basic science in American democracy.
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Customer Reviews:
How to make science more accountable? September 6, 1998
19 out of 23 found this review helpful
This book is not about antiscientism, it is about accountibality of science funding. There are several economical myths related to the state policy of basic science funding. Two of them : "..basic research is performed without thought of practical ends" and "...basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress" as well as famous Baconian "linear model",( a sequence extending from basic science to technology: basic science - applied research - development - production and operations) are dramatically reevaluated and critizied in the reviewing book. The most important implications of agruments presented in this well written book are: a) Basic science must be accountable as any other state funding activities and based on "informed judgments of research promise and social need"; b) Progress of science and technology have "semiautonomous trajectories", therefore state investment in basic research does not provide progress in the technology and economical growth. It looks like it is a good time "to end" so-called "endless frontiers" of unaccountable spending of taxpayer's money for funding useless basic science research. Everybody who is interested in the basic science funding policy must read this excellent book. It demonstrates a difference between the economical reality and propaganda of illusions.
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