TY - JOUR
T1 - Presidential address in search of synthesis
AU - Gober, Patricia
N1 - Funding Information:
A second message is that business as usual, in which the scientific community has almost complete autonomy over what research projects do and do not deserve support, is likely to change. In fact, the model of scientific autonomy is a relatively recent phenomenon stemming from Vannevar Bush’s vision of the relationship between science and society. Bush directed the Office of Science Research and Development during the Second World War. After the war, he and his advisors sought to find a way to continue to support science while curtailing government control over the science effort. Bush’s 1945 report made a compelling case for the importance of basic research as an engine for technological and economic development (Bush 1946). His linear model linking science to society held that the social benefits of basic research often appear many years after the work is started, and thus there is no certainty as to which, if any, of the many national needs will benefit from any particular piece of work. His vision of science and society led to the widespread acceptance of the federal government’s role in funding basic research and in training new scientists, to dramatic across-the-board increases in science funding, and to the establishment of the National Science Foundation (NSF). It also gave the scientific community free rein in picking and choosing what was to be studied from the infinite list of possibilities and led to an elitist isolation of science from the society that supports its work.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2000
Y1 - 2000
N2 - The American scientific community currently is being challenged to provide the basic and applied research that is necessary for the nation to make better decisions related to the environment. Concern with the environment has led to the demand for a more synthetic perspective, one that identifies linkages among the cultural, social, political, economic, physical, biological, chemical, and geological systems that govern our world. Geography has a historic opportunity to position itself at the nexus of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, and to lead the search for synthesis. In order to achieve this goal, however, we must leave the isolated intellectual realms into which we have retreated, dampen the fires of criticism that have polarized us, rethink the way graduate education is structured, foster new networks of communication, and develop a disciplinary culture that values both specialized analytical research and broader integrative research.
AB - The American scientific community currently is being challenged to provide the basic and applied research that is necessary for the nation to make better decisions related to the environment. Concern with the environment has led to the demand for a more synthetic perspective, one that identifies linkages among the cultural, social, political, economic, physical, biological, chemical, and geological systems that govern our world. Geography has a historic opportunity to position itself at the nexus of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, and to lead the search for synthesis. In order to achieve this goal, however, we must leave the isolated intellectual realms into which we have retreated, dampen the fires of criticism that have polarized us, rethink the way graduate education is structured, foster new networks of communication, and develop a disciplinary culture that values both specialized analytical research and broader integrative research.
KW - Disciplinary specialization
KW - Habits of the mind. © 2000 bv association of american geographers published by blackwell publishers
KW - Science policy
KW - Synthesis
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U2 - 10.1111/0004-5608.00181
DO - 10.1111/0004-5608.00181
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0000921334
VL - 90
SP - 1
EP - 11
JO - Annals of the American Association of Geographers
JF - Annals of the American Association of Geographers
SN - 2469-4452
IS - 1
ER -