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Chapter2 2

Science is characterized by rapid and exponential growth, with a significant majority of scientists and scientific articles existing in the present. This modernity leads to a present-centered outlook, where recent research is prioritized over historical work. Consequently, science appears youthful, as many scientists are young and newly entering their fields.

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11 views1 page

Chapter2 2

Science is characterized by rapid and exponential growth, with a significant majority of scientists and scientific articles existing in the present. This modernity leads to a present-centered outlook, where recent research is prioritized over historical work. Consequently, science appears youthful, as many scientists are young and newly entering their fields.

Uploaded by

Nikhil Kumar
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The Kuhnian Revolution 13

Box 2.1 The modernity of science

Many commentators on science have felt that it is a particularly modern


institution. By this they generally mean that it is exceptionally rational, or
exceptionally free of local contexts. While science’s exceptionality in either
of these senses is contentious, there is a straightforward sense in which
science is, and always has been, modern. As Derek de Solla Price (1986 [1963])
has pointed out, science has grown rapidly over the past three hundred years.
In fact, by any of a number of indicators, science’s growth has been steadily
exponential. Science’s share of the US gross national product has doubled
every 20 years. The cumulative number of scientific journals founded has
doubled every 15 years, as has the membership in scientific institutes, and
the number of people with scientific or technical degrees. The numbers of
articles in many sub-fields have doubled every 10 years. These patterns
cannot continue indefinitely – and in fact have not continued since Price
did his analysis.
A feature of this extremely rapid growth is that between 80 and 90 per-
cent of all the scientists who have ever lived are alive now. For a senior
scientist, between 80 and 90 percent of all the scientific articles ever
written were written during his or her lifetime. For working scientists the
distant past of their fields is almost entirely irrelevant to their current research,
because the past is buried under masses of more recent accomplishments.
Citation patterns show, as one would expect, that older research is considered
less relevant than more recent research, perhaps having been superseded
or simply left aside. For Price, a “research front” in a field at some time can
be represented by the network of articles that are frequently cited. The front
continually picks up new articles and drops old ones, as it establishes new
problems, techniques, and solutions. Whether or not there are paradigms
as Kuhn sees them, science pays most attention to current work, and little
to its past. Science is modern in the sense of having a present-centered out-
look, leaving its past to historians.
Rapid growth also gives science the impression of youth. At any time, a
disproportionate number of scientists are young, having recently entered
their fields. This creates the impression that science is for the young, even
though individual scientists may make as many contributions in middle
age as in youth (Wray 2003).

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