By Marilyn McCully.
Princeton, 1978.
160 pp. $10.50 (cloth, $25)
By Garrett Hardin. Kaufmann, 1978. 293 pp. $4.95(cloth, $11.95)
By Bin Ramke. Yale, 1978. 74
pp. $2.95 (cioth, $7.95)
The scientists known to the Ameri- can public today are not inventors like Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the others who be- came famous in the 19th century for technological innovations. Nor are they discoverers of new principles, like the 20th century's Albert Ein- stein. They are not leaders of the sci- entific community who have served as spokesmen in high places-such as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Millikan after World War I and electrical engineer Vannevar Bush after W...
Nathan Reingold
In 1800, the score of professional scientists in the United States was scarcely distinguishable from the somewhat larger group of devoted amateurs-like the gentleman-scholar Thomas Jefferson and the multi-talented Benjamin Franklin. As befitted a nation of farmers, sailors, and craftsmen, most Americans pursued such sciences as zoology, botany, geology, and astron- omy-sciences rooted in the world around them. There was a constitutional mandate to "wromote" the useful...
In 1800, the score of professional scientists in the United States was scarcely distinguishable from the somewhat larger group of devoted amateurs-like the gentleman-scholar Thomas Jefferson and the multi-talented Benjamin Franklin. As befitted a nation of farmers, sailors, and craftsmen, most Americans pursued such sciences as zoology, botany, geology, and astron- omy-sciences rooted in the world around them. There was a constitutional mandate to "wromote" the useful arts and sci- ences...
Very little human activity ever proves of much consequence in the anarchic scheme of history, and, whether fortunate or not, the fact is nonetheless irksome; men do not like to be told that they are plowing the waves.
The Roman noet Horace ventured one solution: Through
"
art, he claimed, one could erect a monument "more permanent than bronzeupand he was right, at least in his own case. But today men are building a collective, not an individual, monu- ment: the edifice of scientific...
SCIENCE
DILEMMAS
DOWN THE ROAD
by John D.Holmfeld
Since World War I1 science has become a major claimant on the federal budget; it now involves every federal department, some 45 congressional committees, a score of specialized agen- cies, about 500 universities, and nearly 2 million scientists, en- gineers, and technicians~one third of them concentrated in re- search and development.
If this effort seems diffuse, there are nevertheless some overarching principles. Among them: that the fe...
Thomas Cripps
Scholars cannot agree on the nature of "popular culture," but they do seem to know its sources.
They point, for example, to a demographic bulge toward the end of the 17th century that restored Europe's population to the high levels of 1348-the year of the Black Death. This emergence of a new mass audience coincided with the first industrial revo- lution; cheaper printing and increased literacy soon helped nur-
The WilsonQuarterlyISummer 1978
87
ture the rise of popular...
Scholars cannot agree on the nature of "popular culture," but they do seem to know its sources.
They point, for example, to a demographic bulge toward the end of the 17th century that restored Europe's population to the high levels of 1348-the year of the Black Death. This emergence of a new mass audience coincided with the first industrial revo- lution; cheaper printing and increased literacy soon helped nur-
The WilsonQuarterlyISummer 1978
87
POP CULTURE
ture the rise of popular...