The Growth of Thought in Society

Abstract

A MOVEMENT denying the justification of pure science was started in England in 193I by a group of Soviet delegates, including Bucharin and Hessen,2 at an International Congress of the History of Science, held in that year in London. It has been carried on since with considerable success by a number of able writers, mostly Marxists, under the leadership of L. Hogben, J. D. Bernal, and J. G. Crowther. As a result the idea of pure science is considered to-day as obsolete and reactionary by most of the scientists who take an active interest in the position of science in society. Though such scientists form a comparatively small minority, they have now brought considerable influence to bear on important organisations and publications dealing with scientific policy. The doctrine of this school can be summed up in three points. (i) Pure science, as distinct from scientific technology, has no real existence. All science, pure or applied, arises in response to the specific practical needs of contemporary society. The ideals of a disinterested search for truth and of the cultivation of science for its own sake are unsocial and futile.3 (2) Modern science in the last 300 years pursued this wrong tendency, which must now be replaced by a social control of science in the interests of the community.4 It follows that resistance of scientists to social control of research and their claim for freedom of research is unreasonable. (3) Instead of urging such claims, scientists ought to join in the struggle for the establishment of the right kind of political power, which may be expected to advance science in the right direction.5