Organisation of Science in England

by Donald Stephen Lowell Cardwell

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1972

Reviews

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent reference text (even if quite old) on the growth of scientific infrastructure and institutions in England (a far more recent affair than you'd think) through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

A major, counter-intuitive conclusion from the study:

I have already produced material evidence to suggest what I have argued in principle above—that until the universities were producing the specialist, industrial demand could not make itself felt—did not in fact, exist—and young men could not enter industrial research in large numbers. This is a reversal of that theory which explains professional scientific training by reference to industrial demand—it is an assertion of the opposite. The reverse of the professional coin is, of course, a form of specialism; but specialism, as I have shown, arose as a socially selected consequence of university examinations, of Honours Schools and Triposes, and in such a manner that demand for professional applied scientists could not possibly have played any part in the process. Further, I went on to show that the first real professional scientists to be produced in any significant numbers were not would-be industrial researchers, but intending teachers; and it was only when those conditions were fulfilled that an industrial demand could, at last, arise. Industrial demand therefore played no more part in the specialisation of the various science degrees than it did in the specialisation of the Classics Tripos or the London B.A. (246)