The professions of science in America: their ambivalent history

Abstract

Science started to become professionalized in the United States during the Jackson~an period. A principal aim of professionalization was to secure the goals and standards of research from interference by laymen by the institutionalization of scientific autonomy. Then and since, the scientific professions have sought to legitimate themselves by promising various quid pro quos to the society in exchange for the privilege of autonomy. The promises have included the claim that the study of science would foster morally disinterested habits of thinking and that the results of research would lead to practical., material benefit. Since the turn of the century, the claims of legitimation have in many respects been substantially validated, and the scientific professions have grown and prospered. But the very success of science, particularly after it became a favored ward of the federal government, combined with the arrangements of autonomy to provoke popular resentment and, in the era of Vietnam, rebellion. The turmoil revealed that the American scientific professions, at once respected and suspected, esoteric yet indispensable, were destined to live in tension with the larger society indefinitely.

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