IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/wsi/wschap/9789814343688_0006.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Moment of Truth for Science: The Consequences of the ‘Knowledge Society’ for Society and Science

In: Beyond The Knowledge Trap Developing Asia's Knowledge-Based Economies

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Weingart

Abstract

Science is probably the fastest growing enterprise in our society. Since the 17th century, every doubling of the population has seen a tripling in the number of scientists (Price, 1971). This means that, over the last 300 years, Western societies have invested a major part of their resources into the production, revision and verification of knowledge. It is a process that perpetuates itself if sufficiently nourished — the more resources go into science, the more scientists are educated, the more results they produce and the more questions arise. In this regard, the frontiers of science are indeed endless, to paraphrase Vannevar Bush's slogan. The exponential growth of science is seen as the main factor in the shift from an industrialised society to a knowledge society (Bell, 1973)…

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Weingart, 2011. "The Moment of Truth for Science: The Consequences of the ‘Knowledge Society’ for Society and Science," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Thomas Menkhoff & Hans-Dieter Evers & Yue Wah Chay & Eng Fong Pang (ed.), Beyond The Knowledge Trap Developing Asia's Knowledge-Based Economies, chapter 6, pages 155-164, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:wschap:9789814343688_0006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814343688_0006
    Download Restriction: Ebook Access is available upon purchase.
    File URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814343688_0006
    Download Restriction: Ebook Access is available upon purchase.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:wschap:9789814343688_0006. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscientific.com/page/worldscibooks .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.