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This thought-provoking book expands on the notion that Big Science
is not the only term to describe and investigate particularly large
research projects, scientific collaborations and facilities. It
investigates the significant overlap between Big Science and
Research Infrastructures (RIs) in a European context since the
early twenty-first century. Contributions to this innovative book
not only augment the study of Big Science with new perspectives,
but also launch the study of RIs as a promising new line of
inquiry. Chapters testify to a generational shift that is taking
place in this field, amending and complementing prior analyses of
Big Science. Advancing our knowledge, this interdisciplinary book
explores how Big Science and RIs can be categorized, how the
politics around them can be understood, and how they relate to the
surrounding science and research policy landscape of Europe. Big
Science and Research Infrastructures in Europe will be of value to
students and scholars interested in science and innovation policy
across sociology, economics, management and political science.
Policymakers, science administrators and operators of RIs will also
benefit from the critical insights provided. Contributors include:
I.K. Bolliger, A. Collsioeoe, K.C. Cramer, B. D'Ippolito, H.
Eriksson, T. Franssen, A. Griffiths, O. Hallonsten, J.-C. Mauduit,
M. Moskovko, N. Ruffin, C.-C. Ruling, I. Ulnicane, A. Williams
This book analyses the emergence of a transformed Big Science in
Europe and the United States, using both historical and
sociological perspectives. It shows how technology-intensive
natural sciences grew to a prominent position in Western societies
during the post-World War II era, and how their development cohered
with both technological and social developments. At the helm of
post-war science are large-scale projects, primarily in physics,
which receive substantial funds from the public purse. Big Science
Transformed shows how these projects, popularly called 'Big
Science', have become symbols of progress. It analyses changes to
the political and sociological frameworks surrounding
publicly-funding science, and their impact on a number of new
accelerator and reactor-based facilities that have come to
prominence in materials science and the life sciences.
Interdisciplinary in scope, this book will be of great interest to
historians, sociologists and philosophers of science.
Innovation is generally viewed as something inherently good, a
source of progress and prosperity in our society. But innovation
can also have negative, unintended, and wasteful effects, if
policies are misdirected and organizations pursue innovation to
look good and convey a message, rather than to actually achieve
improvements of technologies, services, and products. This book
makes the case that innovation has become a buzzword, a political
cure-all, and increasingly an empty phrase, and that this has
become detrimental to innovation itself. Governmental (and
supra-governmental) innovation policy is often unrealistically
phrased and shaped, and corporate innovation projects are not
seldom meaningless acts of window-dressing. The book describes the
problems this presents for society, organizations, and individuals,
and seeks explanations for why it has come to be this way. Giving
way to a more realistic view of what innovation really is, and how
it can be accomplished, the book develops a multifaceted
sociological and historical argument where several complementary
reasons for the prevalence of “empty innovation” are proposed.
The book will be of great interest to scholars and students of
innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and all those with an
interest in the failures of current innovation strategies. This is
an open access book.
This book analyses the emergence of a transformed Big Science in
Europe and the United States, using both historical and
sociological perspectives. It shows how technology-intensive
natural sciences grew to a prominent position in Western societies
during the post-World War II era, and how their development cohered
with both technological and social developments. At the helm of
post-war science are large-scale projects, primarily in physics,
which receive substantial funds from the public purse. Big Science
Transformed shows how these projects, popularly called 'Big
Science', have become symbols of progress. It analyses changes to
the political and sociological frameworks surrounding
publicly-funding science, and their impact on a number of new
accelerator and reactor-based facilities that have come to
prominence in materials science and the life sciences.
Interdisciplinary in scope, this book will be of great interest to
historians, sociologists and philosophers of science.
On 28 May 2009, at a closed meeting in Brussels, ministers and
state secretaries of education and science from several EU
countries decided to build the European Spallation Source (ESS) in
Lund, Sweden. Or did they? It is common for big European science
projects to be surrounded by secrecy and political deceit, but the
ESS is extraordinary in its elusiveness. There is a remarkable lack
of concrete economic, political, technical and scientific
underpinnings to the project - but a boasting certainty in the
promises of future paybacks. The ESS is an accelerator-based
neutron spallation facility that will cost billions of Euros to
build and run. It is expected to bring new knowledge in several
fields including materials science, energy research, and the life
sciences. But its financing is not yet certain, and future returns
hard to predict. How then could the decision to build ESS occur?
Why was there so little organized resistance? This book places the
ESS project in its political and scientific context. It links the
decisions taken to the history of Big Science in Europe and in
Sweden. It looks at the dynamic political processes of establishing
this megaproject in a small town in the south of Sweden. The eight
chapters start from a paradoxical state of affairs: The ESS is not
funded, and not formally decided in any binding agreements - yet it
is treated as a future reality, locally and nationally, loaded with
promises of scientific, economic and social returns. The book makes
a much-needed first contribution to the analysis of the ESS project
and its political, environmental, and social ramifications. It
should be read by scholars of science and technology studies,
politicians and the interested general public.
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