The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications (Nobel Symposium 123)

Grandin, Karl, Nina Wormbs, Anders Lundgren, and Sven Widmalm, eds., 2004, 480pp., illus.

The Nobel Symposium, of which the current volume is a result, wanted to gauge the current level of academic debate about "science and industry in the 20th century"—with an emphasis on historical aspects but in various ways connecting them to the ongoing discussion about science-industry relations in cultures between historians and business-studies scholars . . . was noticeable at the symposium . . . the "linear model" was used as a point of departure for the project and, also, to some extent for the symposium. This model has been used to rethink the relationship between science, technology, and society for over a century now . . . This was a powerful expression of faith in the existence of a casual relationship between science, technology, and society . . .  This unidirectional model has been regarded by many of us as something of a straw man—but during the symposium the straw man showed disturbing signs of life and propensity for trouble making . . .  the papers in this volume may, on one level, be seen as attempts to grapple with questions of narrative and meaning in our understanding of science and industry. The nonlinear models now in vogue seem to shadow broad socioeconomic change in an uncanny fashion but as academic scholars, one thing we surely want to avoid is a corrosion of the character of research . . .

 

“ . . . With more than twenty essays dealing with a diverse set of issues from innovation case studies to explorations of the linear model’s provenance and social function, the book’s contents cannot adequately be described here. Suffice it to say, it is worth a closer look by scholars with an interest in the social condition of science and technology today.” —BJHS, 2006, 9

“ . . . There is a lot of ground covered in the more than 400 pages of this volume, and I suspect that any reader of Technology & Culture will find something useful here.” —Daniel Lee Kleinman, Technology & Culture

“ . . . Trying to make up for lost time, 22 contributors in this weighty 450-page text largely focus on the question: is it meaningful to understand industrial research as a component of a linear path from basic science on the one end to marketed products on the other? This linear model has come under fire before from economists, historians, and policy experts; in fact, the literature depicting it as a straw man greatly exceeds that of its defendants . . . So what do the remarkable set of historians and sociologists assembled in this book suggest? While it is not unusual to see historians and sociologists affecting national policies on education and welfare, science and technology policies still rely most heavily on experts with scientific credentials . . . Intriguingly, papers in the volume then examine the ways in which research itself has been industrialized. The "triple helix" of relations linking academe, industry, and government is at the core of new regimes for generating knowledge and commodities, and knowledge as a commodity…elegantly designed and has a good index for an edited volume . . . ” —Chemical Heritage; History and Technology