Science, Government, and Society

Historically men have sought knowledge in a variety of ways both for its own sake and in order to increase their control over the environment. Science has increasingly made its impact on society through technical applications of scientific findings. Science has thus helped to alter social struc ture. At the same time increases in population, in social dif ferentiation, and heterogeneity have made necessary large-scale organization. The effect has been felt in the structure of science and the role and status of the scientist; for example, the individual scholar has been replaced to a considerable ex tent by the scientific organization man. Government encour agement of some areas of scientific research has expanded enormously in the United States, inevitably within a bureau cratic framework. In the process the scientist has come to be valued not for his scholarship but for his ability to provide solutions to specific problems and thus to increase national power. Bureaucracy has a price, but it is an organizational form which is understandably and functionally necessary and to which science must adapt.