Page images
PDF
EPUB

207. This section draws on the following sources: Congressional Research Service, NBS, 1971-1980; General Accounting Office, Information on Mission and Functions of the National Bureau of Standards (CED-81-39, April 22, 1981); and a U.S. Department of Commerce brochure, "National Bureau of Standards" (NBS Special Publication 643, February 1983).

208. NBS, 1971-1980, p. 186.

209. On other-agency funding, see GAO, Mission and Functions of NBS, pp. 33-34.

210. Ibid., p. 35.

211. Information on AMRF supplied by NBS Director, Dr. Ernest Ambler.

212. Margie Ploch, "Industry Invests in Research Centers," in High Technology, vol. 3, no. 5 (May 1983), pp. 15-18.

213. See NBS, 1971-1980, pp. 197-206, for text of Stevenson-Wydler Act, P.L. 96-480.

214. Samuel I. Doctors, The Role of Federal Agencies in Technology Transfer (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969).

215. NBS, 1971-1980, p. 73.

216. GAO, Mission and Functions of NBS, pp. 57-59. 217. NBS, 1971-1980, p. 131. Emphasis in original.

218. Information supplied by NBS Director, Dr. Ernest Ambler. 219. NBS, 1971-1980, p. 101.

220. This section draws on the following sources: U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, The Future Role of the Atomic Energy Commission Laboratories, 86th Cong., 2nd Sess. (October 1960); General Accounting Office, The Multiprogram Laboratories: A National Resource for Nonnuclear Energy Research, Development and Demonstration (EMD-78-62, May 22, 1978); and Energy Research Advisory Board (ERAB), Multiprogram Laboratory Panel, The Department of Energy Multiprogram Laboratories, 3 vols. (September 1982). Reprinted in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Technology, Subcommittees on Energy Development and Applications and Energy Research and Production, 97th Cong., 2nd Sess., hearing on The Future of the Department of Energy's Multiprogram Laboratories (December 2, 1982). References to ERAB Report will be to volume and page number of the report, not the committee hearing.

221. ERAB, The Department of Energy Multiprogram Laboratories, vol. II, p. 1.

222. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 9-10.

223. Alvin M. Weinberg, Reflections on Big Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967), pp. 135-136. Emphasis in original.

224. GAO, The Multiprogram Laboratories, p. 6.

225. ERAB, The Department of Energy Multiprogram Laboratories, vol. I, p. 22.

226. Ibid., vol. I, p. 21.

227. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 37, 44, and 46.

228. GAO, The Multiprogram Laboratories, p. 33.

229. Ibid., p. 34.

230. Ibid., p. 8., and ERAB, The Department of Energy Multiprogram Laboratories, vol. II, p. 20. The GAO report omits the Ames Laboratory, while the ERAB Report includes it. Had GAO included the Ames Laboratory, it would have further reduced the rise in nonnuclear energy R&D to no more than one-half of one percent from 9 to 9.5 percent.

231. ERAB, The Department of Energy Multiprogram Laboratories, vol. I, p. 22.

232. Compare with Harvey Brooks, "Applied Research: Definitions, Concepts, Themes," in Harvey Brooks, The Government of Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968), especially pp. 319-325. 233. Ibid., pp. 317-318.

234. ERAB, The Department of Energy Multiprogram Laboratories, vol. II. p. 66. See note 220 supra, for full citation.

235. Brooks, "Applied Research," p. 284.

236. ERAB, vol. II, Section 5.

237. Drucker, Peter S., Technology, Management and Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 97-98.

238. Webb, Space Age Management: The Large-Scale Approach, p. 61. 239. Baals and Corliss, Wind Tunnels of NASA, pp. 117-120.

240. Brooks, "Applied Research," pp. 318-319.

241. Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, Science and Society (Baltimore: Pelican Books, 1970), p. 266.

242. On the principle of bounded rationality, see James G. March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1958), pp. 203-204.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY

There is no book that corresponds precisely to what we have attempted here- namely, to provide an up-to-date account of what a certain kind of Federal laboratory does. In the course of our research, we have drawn heavily on the internal documents of many agencies, our own experience in Federal research establishments, and the printed sources cited below. Our aim in this essay is perhaps less to indicate the scope of our investigations than to encourage readers to explore the ramifications of science and technology policies on their own. Our approach is to go from the general to the more particular. We begin by citing the more accessible works in organization theory, list works dealing with the theory of scientific method and the history of science and technology, and conclude with contemporary accounts of technology development sponsored by the Federal Government.

Theories of Organization. The work of Herbert Simon is indispensable to an understanding of modern organization theory, particularly Administrative Behavior, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1957) and (with James March) Organizations (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958). Also important is Chester Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938) and its emphasis on informal organization. Peter Blau and Marshall Meyer, Bureaucracy in Modern Society, 2nd ed. (New York: Random House, 1971), is a useful introduction to its subject, and it may be supplemented by D.S. Pugh, ed., Organization Theory (New York: Penguin Books, 1971) and Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), which contains essays by the classic theorist of bureacracy. A work that discusses both organizations and the relations between them is Theodore Caplow, Principles of Organization (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1964).

Among the empirical studies of organizations, the following are noteworthy: Philip Selznick, TVA and the Grass Roots (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949); Alfred Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962), uses case studies of DuPont, Sears, Roebuck, General Motors, and Standard Oil to illustrate the transformation of huge centralized organizations into

more decentralized ones; while Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman, In Search of Excellence (New York: Warner Books, 1982), have discussed (with a wealth of illustrations) the lessons to be learned from "the best-run American companies." Finally, Herbert Kaufman has contributed three well-written, frequently witty, studies in public administration: The Forest Ranger (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), which examines the ways in which a large and decentralized organization gains the cooperation of its field officers by means of "preformed" decisions; Administrative Feedback (written with Michael Couzens) (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1973); and Are Government Organizations Immortal? (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1976).

Scientific Method. The most influential philosopher of science in the English-speaking world in this century is probably Karl Popper. His Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Harper & Row 1968), originally published in Vienna in 1934 as Logik der Forschung, and his Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1965) have as their aim the demarcation of science from metaphysics. According to Popper, a theory is scientific insofar as it is testable or falsifiable or refutable; put differently, "repeated observations and experiments function in science as tests of our conjectures or hypotheses, i.e., as attempted refutations" (Conjectures and Refutations, p. 53).

Some of the most interesting work in the philosophy of scientific method blends history with analyses of what working scientists do. There is a tradition, dating from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, of scientists examining philosophical problems growing out of their work. The most important figures are Ernst Mach (1838-1916), Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894), Henri Poincare (1854-1912), and Pierre Duhem (1861-1916), the last-named also being an eminent historian of medieval science. The work of these men is discussed in Peter Alexander, "The Philosophy of Science, 1850-1910," in D.J. O'Connor, ed., A Critical History of Western Philosophy (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp. 402-425. More recently, Alfred North Whitehead's Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press, 1967, originally published in 1925) is a beautifullywritten account of the evolution of the scientific world view. Thomas Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957) deals with the role of planetary astronomy in the development of western thought; his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), is the most influential recent analysis of how scientific world views originate, become accepted, and are ultimately supplanted as "normal science."

On the sociology of science and scientific institutions, the following are recommended: Peter Medawar, The Hope of Progress (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973) and Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist's Role in Society (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971). Two works dealing with the exponential growth of science and its effects on scientists are Derek de Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971) and Henry Menard, Science: Growth and Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).

On the relation between technology, science, and economic development, Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), is illuminating. John Jewkes, David Sawers, and Richard Stillerman, The Sources of Invention, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969), is the most exhaustive review of the causes and consequences of industrial innovation, as well as its relation to applied science. Richard Nelson, Merton Peck, and Edward Kalachek, Technology, Economic Growth and Public Policy (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1967), analyze the way in which technical advances occur, the impact of new technology on the economy, and the changes in governmental policy needed to stimulate technical advances. Finally, David Billington, The Bridge and the Tower (New York: Basic Books, 1983), shows how the structural art of the engineer is distinct from both architecture and modern design.

History of Science and Technology (General). In the history of science and technology, there are two basic works in English: George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, 5 vols. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1927-1948), and Charles Singer, E.J. Holmyard, and A.R. Hall, eds., A History of Technology, 5 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954-1958). A particularly useful collection of short pieces is Melvin Kranzberg and William Davenport, Technology and Culture, An Anthology (New York: New American Library, 1972).

Useful shorter histories of science include: Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science (New York: Free Press, 1965); Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield, The Fabric of the Heavens: The Development of Astronomy and Dynamics (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); Alexander Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (New York: Harper & Row, 1958); A.R. Hall, The Scientific Revolution 1500-1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962); and Robert Merton, Science, Technology and Society in SeventeenthCentury England (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

« PreviousContinue »