"The year that Rutherford died (1938) there disappeared forever the happy days of free scientific work which gave us such delight in our youth. Science has lost her freedom. Science has become a productive force. She has become rich but she has become enslaved and part of her is veiled in secrecy. I do not know whether Rutherford would continue to joke and laugh as he used to."
P. Kapitza in Science Policy News 1, 33 (1969)
Here are some links to web sites that deal with topics that have been categorized as radical science and related:
"To be fair, the ideological fundamentalism was a little less overt than has been implied. Our director was engaged in a power struggle for the privilege of having Edinburgh as the European headquarters of the future Hubble Space Telescope. He could not afford to have politically naive loose cannons in his establishment. But he was undoubtedly a strict big-banger who disapproved of dissenters, and so he was not being entirely cynical. His political astuteness merely made him more overtly repressive, since he was only too aware that his views were shared by the wider astronomical establishment who would be judging Edinburgh's suitability as the European administrative home for the prestigious space telescope. He also wanted Edinburgh to be seen as a good service establishment, with only a few hand-picked and closely controlled research workers, not a bunch of self-directed scientists pursuing their own agendas. This was at least partly because he wished to comply with the mission of government scientific establishments..." - Michael Hawkins, in "Hunting Down the Universe" (Addison-Wesley, Reading MA, 1997), p. 17-18.
'Contemporary science, with its systems and methods, can put hacks to good use.' - Adapted from Jose Ortega y Gasset - a cultural recognition that the management of science can create an assembly line approach to the production of knowledge.
You may also wish to visit the science education web page for related information.
This page updated 9 April 2003.
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