Is Culture a condition to Science? Or even which culture to which science? Astronomy is known to have developed well starting thousands of years BC, with most ancient cultures and in regions as diverse as Middle and Far East, Western Europe and First American civilizations. Moreover prominent scientists are since the 20th century and now increasingly born from any part of the World.
And yet Kuhn [1] pinpoints the fact that “The bulk of scientific knowledge is a product of Europe in the last four centuries“, even though most observers would concur on earlier foundations, probably to be traced to at least its first universities, and to the specific and exceptional contribution of Hellenistic antique civilization to the inception of science as such, roughly since the 6th century BC. The comments of Kant about Plato and Aristotle, as an example, leave no doubt about this.
Someone may highlight cultures more geared toward fundamental science – such as the Greeks’ – as eventually opposed to engineers’ – like the Roman, others optimally integrating the both of them, so far most western world, yet now going global, vs. others neither good at theorizing nor at experimenting.
Could a scientific world therefore never have happened? For instance in eventual extra-terrestrial civilizations, which would therefore remain at middle-age advancement? Are there cultural dimensions, possibly such as envisioned by Koyré, required for Science to make leap and to permeate society, thereafter becoming the integrated fundamental to industrial intertwining that we currently know?
These are among questions planned to be scrutinized, further modeled, represented and tested in a dedicated series of works, including about reconstructing and visualizing the historical development of science and knowledge, and more generally culture, across the ages, along centuries behind and beyond.
One line of action to achieve this, involving as wide as possible a diversity of cultures, is Cinema, hence some linked projects as sketched on www.staroad.pictures and some of our blogs about cosmology as well as about this feature film long series.
As examples it was once suggested [2] that France was first in Mathematics in Europe, Germany in Chemistry, possibly applied Physics and the United Kingdom in Life sciences even though it seemed that, from the first part of the 20th century to the second, global scientific leadership – among others – had moved from Europe to the US, where it has, so far at least, been much more efficiently shared and integrated with Entrepreneurial spirit and financial resources
Another major question pertains to former so-called ‘third world’ countries, of which several are now most advanced at least in engineering and applied science, especially in Asia, and gave birth to prominent fundamental scientists. It is not yet known to what extent the comprehensive, most integrated cycle socializing and intertwining them with entrepreneurship, capital and markets, is or will be reached, especially when new and possibly more frequent disruptions should be expected, possibly requiring new levels of cultural, societal, political and organizational flexibility and, should we say, adaptation.
In short the SCIENCE CULTURE question could be set as follows: will the context of governments and foundations and often international quite open research fundamental research, with at the other edge proprietary applied research as integrated knowledge evolve toward more open and shared knowledge, but possibly less rewarding to researchers and to further knowledge, or toward less so or, if pieces of knowledge such as scientific journals remain monetized, one way or another, how will this ultimately benefit overall knowledge increase?
There are diverse models about measuring knowledge, some of which concur to its impact in making society, to being with its economy, more efficient, hence cost-efficient, which yields a measure of so applied knowledge.
Anticipating this, and measuring the value of potential knowledge or applicable knowledge, hence bringing new ways to assess, compare and select priorities and relative values along defined horizons, is of utmost interest for Research inceptors, teams, conveyors, funders and repositories, particularly depositaries of portfolios of projects, which have value only relatively to others and to experimental and even applied knowledge in potential new uses, hence relatively to, say, industrial economics or more broadly societal improvement.
It is also of genuine value for cultures that would be most active in fundamental and experimental, published science yet not always, not enough and not downward enough connected with potential markets and dissemination.
This is part of the experimental project for REVUER, as summarized on recent and next blogs and on www.revuer.org.
[1] T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, © 1962, 1970 by The University of Chicago. ISBN: 0-226-45803-2 (clothbound); 0-226-45804-0 (paperbound) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-107472
[2] References to be recovered (stats about European publications and prizes)
Comprehensive Universe 