Artefactos (Dec 2011)
Relationships between scientific researchers and the economy
Abstract
This paper argues that taking the economy seriously in histories of science could not only extend the range of activities studied but also change, often quite radically our understanding of well-known cases and instances about the scientific novelty generation in twentieth-century science. It shows how scientific intellectuals and historians of science have followed the money as a means of critique of particular forms of science, as a critique of particular conceptions of science. It suggests the need to go further, to a much broader implicit definition of what constitutes science, one which implies a criticism of much history of twentieth-century science, for defining it implicitly and inappropriately in very restrictive ways.
