Scientific Practice and Scientific Politics

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9321305 Nye Scientists, among the most highly educated citizens in any society, have often seen that they carry a special responsibility to address the problems of the world around them. Professional societies such as the AAAS and APS give special awards to those scientists who make significant contributions to humanity. Professor Nye is examining how our views of the social responsibility of scientists have developed in the contemporary Anglo-American world. During the 1930's British scientists and intellectuals debated economic, social, political, and philosophical issues, as never before, among themselves and before the public. Because their scientific work was taken to exemplify reason, objectivity and progress, many British scientists wondered whether they had a special responsibility to turn their talents directly to the troublesome dilemmas of their time. The essential questions which they debated focused on what came to be called the "social responsibility of science" and included concerns about the social determination of science, the nature of scientific method, the applicability of scientific theories to social problems, the organization and control of science, and the role of scientists in political corridors of power. It may safely be said that these questions remains controversial ones. As in the historical past, individual men and women continue to respond to these questions indifferent, and sometimes equally convincing, ways. Dr. Nye is reexamining and reanalyzing these questions about scientific practice and scientific responsibility through a detailed study of two scientists who answered social questions in radically different ways whose responses carried considerable weight among scientific, philosophical and political circles in England. As close personal friends, faculty colleagues during 1937-53, and directors of scientific laboratories, the physicist P.M.S. Blackett and the physical chemist Michael Polanyi were leading scienti sts in Great Britain in the decades from the 1930's to the 1950's. A close study of their scientific work, their social and philosophical epistemologies, and their political lives is a means to better understanding the complicated relationships among scientific practice, knowledge of the natural world, and improvement of the human condition. ***