The academic sciences were fundamentally transformed in the aftermath of World War II. Prior to the war, science in the universities had been supported by a loose coalition of institutional funds, philanthropic foundations, commercial interests, and ad hoc funding sources: the Small Science ecosystem. After the war, the academic sciences became the client of the federal government, through the establishment of the National Science Foundation, and an expanding range of federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and several others. The pre-war Small Science ecosystem has thereby been transformed into the Big Science ecosystem.
This webinar features Stephen P. Turner, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of South Florida, and Daryl E. Chubin, an independent consultant, and Founding Director of the AAAS Center for Advancing Science & Engineering Capacity. The discussion is moderated by J. Scott Turner, Director of the Intrusion in the Sciences project at the National Association of Scholars.
The discussion centers on Turner’s and Chubin’s article "The changing temptations of science," published recently in Issues in Science and Technology. The article is available online here.
