Social Science and Its Frontiers

Abstract

Social Science and Its Frontiers Myron P. Gutmann (bio) Mark Solovey,Social Science for What? Battles over Public Funding for the “Other Sciences” at the National Science Foundation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2020. X+ 398pp. Figures, notes, index. $50.00. Americans often date the emergence of a strong commitment to government support of science to the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 satellite in October 1957. That event certainly spurred policy decisions that increased federal investments in education and science, and thus is an appropriate starting point for the popular narrative about science. At the same time, policy developments of the Sputnik era built on earlier events, widely recognized by historians of science. That perspective starts the story with the presentation in July 1946 of Vannever Bush’s report, Science, The Endless Frontier, to President Truman, advocating for a large, organized federal investment in scientific research, based on the role of science and technology in the Second World War. Early efforts to enact legislation based on the Bush report failed (Truman vetoed the first bill that passed because it lacked presidential control over the appointment of the Foundation’s leadership), but in 1950 Truman signed the National Science Foundation Act, establishing an enduring basis for publicly—especially federally—funded scientific research in the United States. The debates about the creation of the National Science Foundation pitted progressives against conservatives and advocates of public and congressional control of science against advocates of exclusive control by scientists.1 One of the topics of debate—although hardly the loudest—was whether the social sciences would be included in the Foundation’s charge.2 Vannever Bush was opposed to their inclusion, sometimes arguing that they should be supported by a separate organization; on the other side, Democratic West Virginia Senator Harley M. Kilgore, a leading sponsor of a more progressive approach, supported their inclusion in the Foundation’s mission. In the end, the compromise legislation that Truman signed in 1950 did not include support for the social sciences, but at the same time did not prohibit such support. The Foundation did not totally exclude the social sciences for long; it hired sociologist Harry Alpert in 1953, and in 1954 introduced a first, extremely modest, program to support the linkage between the social and natural sciences. [End Page 396] The first Social Sciences Division was not established until 1960 (in an era in which the Foundation was divided into four scientific divisions reflecting major disciplinary categories). Later, when the Foundation was reorganized into seven directorates (three of them disciplinary, one for education, and three for administrative activities) in 1975, the Divisions of Social Sciences and Behavioral and Neural Sciences were part of an expanded Directorate for Biological, Behavioral and Social Sciences (p. 179). Only in 1991–92 did the Foundation establish a separate Directorate for the Social, Behavioral and Economic (SBE) Sciences, an organizational status that still exists today. The road from the origin of the Foundation to the creation of the SBE Directorate was not linear, with ups and downs in support for the social and behavioral sciences mostly reflecting political and institutional challenges. This history spanning the period from the first discussions of the National Science Foundation through the end of the 1980s (with an added discussion of recent events and recommendations for the future) is the topic of Mark Solovey’s Social Science for What? Battles over Public Funding for the “Other Sciences” at the National Science Foundation. In this book he builds on his earlier book, Shaky Foundations: The Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus in Cold War America (2013), on extensive archival research, and on interviews with surviving participants. Social Science for What? is an impressive accomplishment, capturing the connections between partisan politics, scientific inquiry, tensions among scientific disciplines, and the institutional development of the Foundation. It is instructive for all readers, including for me, who served for four years (2009–13) as one of the Foundation’s Assistant Directors and head of the Directorate for Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). Social Science for What? articulates consistent themes that define social science at NSF, along with a lively narrative arc. To define that arc, Solovey divides the main...