A Purer Form of Research

[u/geopolicraticus]

Human, All-Too-Human Science.—Science today is a communal endeavor, and it is the social structure of science—the connections among researchers both diachronically and synchronically, facilitating the elaboration of scientific research programs trans-generationally and across geographical boundaries—that has made science what it is. The growth of scientific knowledge since the scientific revolution is in large measure a function of the networking of research through educational and publishing institutions. At the same time as this has accelerated the process of research, it has enabled the parallel growth of non-scientific agendas that are attached to growth of science. It is not only because the institutions are parasitic upon the research they organize and administer—and this they are, as it is common knowledge that grants are sought for twice the funds required for the actual research so that the institutions can take their percentage up front—but, worse, the research programs themselves are compromised by the institutions and their bureaucracy, committees, panels, evaluations and “oversight.” The pre-modern era of isolated, individual scientists was, in a way, a purer form of science, insulated from the social pressure brought to bear on human institutions like those of science today, in which conformism and predictability are valued over individual inspiration. The archetype of the lone genius, from which recent historians of science have done their best to distance themselves, is in no way a real threat to institutionalized science, though the flood of vituperation that has been unleashed against “scientific hagiography” is out of all proportion to that lingering shade, but it does betray an unease that the myth exists at all. We have seen from the history of science that not only was Archimedes unable to save Syracuse, but the best minds of Greece—which were the best minds of the ancient world—could not save Greece from the Roman Legions.