(Download) "Winning Greater Influence for Science." by Issues in Science and Technology ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Winning Greater Influence for Science.
- Author : Issues in Science and Technology
- Release Date : January 22, 2003
- Genre: Engineering,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 158 KB
Description
In this space 20 years ago, I reported on the unwritten social contract between scientists and society: an unspoken agreement that gives science a "creative separateness from involvement with goals, values, and institutions other than its own." My conclusion then was that "To an impressive extent, [science's] ... insistence on autonomy has worked brilliantly," although the contract came with a huge, though hidden, price tag. This "social contract" has allowed science to pursue long-term fundamental questions and to build slowly on the basis of its new knowledge. Science has been able to do this even in the context of a society such as ours, which in most domains is impatient, excessively pragmatic, and thinks only in the short term. But this same social contract is responsible for the widening disparity between the sophistication of our science and the relatively primitive state of our social and political relationships.