Prometheus Bound

By: Ziman, J. M.

Book Overview

After expanding steadily for centuries, science is reaching the limits to its growth. We can no longer afford the ever-increasing cost of exploring ever wider research opportunites. In the competition for resources, science is becoming much more tightly organized. A radical, pervasive and permanent structural change is taking place. It already affects the whole research system, from everyday laboratory life to national budgets. The scientific enterprise cannot avoid fundamental change, but excessive managerial insistence on accountability, evaluation priority setting and so on, can be very inhospitable to expertise, innovation, criticism and creativity. Can the research system be reshaped without losing many features that have made science so productive? This analysis of a deep-rooted historical process does not assume any technical knowledge of the natural sciences, their history, philosophy, sociology or politics. It is addressed to everybody who is concerned about the future of science and its place in society.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521434300
• ISBN13: 9780521434300
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.2" x 9.3"