rise of the modern paradigm and transforming the paradigm

Ch. 2 & 3 Rise of the Modern Paradigm and Transforming the Paradigm

In Stokes, Donald. Pasteur’s Quadrant (Washington DC: Brookings, 1997) !

Presenter: Chen-Yi Tu, IONTU

Outline• Ch. 2 Rise of the Modern Paradigm!

• Ideal of pure inquiry in classic time

• Ideal of control of nature in early modern science

• Institutionalizing the separation of pure from applied in Europe (Britain, France, Germany)

• American & Bush’s plan (Science, the Endless Frontier)

• Ch. 3 Transforming the Paradigm!

• Early dissent

• Official reporting category (i.e. OECD)

• Expanding the dimensional image

• Probing the framework & Rethinking the dynamic paradigm

• Implications for policy

Ch. 2 Rise of Modern Paradigm

• Pure inquiry in classic time

• “Greek could, in a sense, have invented these things only by severing the tie between philosophic inquiry and the practical arts”

• e.g. sun and moon

Ch.2-1 Pure inquiry in classical times

• Idealist view of Plato and Aristotle

• Bias against practical use

• Achievement of Archimedes of war-making machine

• Exception: Hippocratic physicians

• Survived in Arabic text and translated in 12th and 13th century

Ch.2-2 Ideal of the Control of Nature in Early Modern Science

• Besides the pure science tradition in Greek tradition, European see their science as a means of controlling nature

• Coupling of knowledge and action in Italian Renaissance

Ch.2-2 Ideal of the Control of Nature in Early Modern Science

• Utilitarian ideal from Francis Bacon

• “Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect, for nature is only subdued by submission”

• Solomon’s House to Royal Society

Ch.2-3 Institutionalizing the Separation of Pure from Applied in Europe

• Gap between understanding and use drained Bacon’s utilitarian’s call to action of its immediacy and covert it into a faith that endeavours of science would eventually improve human’s condition

• Social separation between those who advanced science and practical arts (18th and 19th c. Britain)


• In 19th century, the creation of professional, economically viable research careers in the university and research institutes powerfully stimulate the growth of science

• e.g. Lord Kelvin, Maxwell

• Awareness that technical innovation would require the continuous application of scientific method to industrial process led to the creation of technical school

• École Polytechnique


• Most-fully institutionalised in Germany

• Wissenschaft : the German language term for any study or science that involves systematic research

• New university, disciplines, fields and learning format

• Special lecture, research seminars, monographic studies


• Technische Hochschule (institute of technology) & its close-link with industry

• Sharp separation concealed some complexities in the interplay of the research goals of understanding and use

• e.g. industry recruited university-trained chemist to produce new synthetic dyes

• Kaiser Wilhelm Institute: Centers of use-inspired scientific research

Ch. 2-4 Institutionalizing the Separation of Pure from Applied in America

• In view of the strongly utilitarian character of prior American science it is almost astonishing how successful the American emulators of the German experience were in providing pure science and institutional base within the new universities

• Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Henry

• Josiah Willard Gibbs: 3rd person to earn Yale’s new Ph.D degree

Ch. 2-4.1 Institutionalizing the Separation of Pure from Applied in America

• Rise of new research universities

• Cornell (1865), John Hopkins (1876)….

• Research chair (Germany) v.s. Junior faculty (American)

• American science and technology is “mirror-image” twins

Ch. 2-4.1 Institutionalizing the Separation of Pure from Applied in America

• Kuhn’s institutional explanation of separation:

• Germans recognized that science and technology advance by inherently different processes and created distinct institutional setting in which each could thrive

• American innovators were unwilling to dedicated their universities only to pure science

• Agriculture, biomedicine

• Distinction within universities: US Military Academy, MIT

Ch. 2-4.2 Reinforcing the Separation: The Aftermath of WWII

• WWII profoundly transformed the relationship between science and government

• Vannevar Bush with Office of Scientific Research and Development


• As war drew to a close, scientific and policy communities were agreed that federal investment in science should continue

• OSRD pioneered the idea of contracting directly with the universities and industry. Also the idea of compensating full cost of the work and retain patent


• Criticism: leading universities and firms may use the resulting patent rights to control their market

• Harley M. Kilgore (1944): Creation of a National Science Foundation to promote basic and applied research and scientific training after the war


• Science, the Endless Frontier

• Basic research is performed without thought of practical ends

• Pacemaker of technological improvement

• Ensure the autonomy of science through organisation (“National Research Foundation”)

Ch. 2-4.3 Response to Bush’s Plan

• Creation of National Science Foundation in 1950

• Resistance from president and congress

• Retain political control to the organisation

• Distribution of investment


• Other resistances

• Patents for government-sponsored research

• How about social science? (1968)

• Military part: Office of Naval Research (ONR)


• Defeat of the plan made it more likely that its paradigm view of science and technology would triumph

• Korean War, Cold War and Vietnam War

• Response to the launching of Sputnik- challenge to American “science”


• Project Hindsight: 1 in 10 of weapon systems can be traced to research of any kind

• TRACE: technological innovation could be science-based

Ch. 2 Summary

• Paradox was completed, but the tension between this paradigm and the actual experience of science remained

• Challenges to Bush’s canons became more insistent as country’s needs shifted from military to the economic sphere

Ch. 3 Transforming the paradigm

• It is no longer believed that a heavy investment in pure, curiosity-driven basic science will by itself guarantee the technology required to compete in the world economy and meet a full spectrum of other societal needs

Ch. 3-1 Early Dissents

• “No on can drew a sharp line between basic and applied research and the Foundation will support many investigations that might be classed in one area or the other” - James B. Conant (President of Harvard)

Ch. 3-1 Early Dissents

• “Basic research” refers to fundamental studies carried out in the context of industry. “Applied research” aim primarily at practical application - Lillian Hoddeson

• “the terms basic and applied are, in another sense, not opposite. Work directed toward applied goals can be highly fundamental in character in that it has an important impact on the conceptual structure or outlook of a fields. Moreover, the fact that research is of such a nature that it can be applied does not mean that it is not also basic” - Harvey Brook (e.g. Louise Pasteur)

Ch. 3-2 Official reporting categories

• Frascati Manual by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (1970)

• “Strategic research” ?

Ch. 3-3 Expanding the Dimensional Image

Basic Applied

Pasteur

0

Basic Applied

Understanding Control

Pasteur’s quadrant

George M. Whitesides Interface Focus 2015 5 20150031; DOI: 10.1098/rsfs.2015.0031.

Wissenschaft

Ch. 3-4 Probing the Framework

• Paths between science discovery and new technology are multiple, unevenly paced and nonlinear

• Cardiac surgery: from anaesthesia to surgery 100 years later

• New diagnosis with new technology


• Conceptual issues between basic and applied science

• Characterizing research ex ante or ex post?

• Whose goals are to be consulted?

Ch. 3-4 Probing the Framework• Can the two dimensions reduce to one?

(ASTEC)


• Time to application

• Molecular biology v.s. plasma physics

Ch. 3-5 Rethinking the dynamic paradigm

• “Everyone knows that the linear model of innovation is dead” - Nathan Rosenberg

• Ryo Hirasawa: “Concurrent system” model of the overlapping rather than sequential management of research, development, production and sales by innovative Japanese firms

• Stephen J. Kline and Rosenberg: “Chanin-linked” model of innovation with chain, feedback and initiation elements

Ch. 3-5 Rethinking the dynamic paradigm

Ch. 3-6 Implications for Policy• The paradigm view of science and technology that emerged from WWII gave a

notably incomplete account of the actual relationship between basic research and technological innovation

• The incompleteness of the postwar paradigm is impairing the dialogue between the scientific and policy communities and impeding the search for a fresh compact between science and government

• A more realistic view of the relationship of science and technology must allow for the critically important role of use-inspired based research in linking the semiautonomous trajectories of scientific understanding and technological know-how

• A clearer understanding by the scientific and policy communities of the role of use-inspired basic research can help renew the compact between science and government, a compact that must also provide support for pure basic research

• Agenda of use-inspired basic research can be built only by bringing together informed judgments of research promise and societal need

rise of the modern paradigm and transforming the paradigm

Government & Nonprofit