IRAQ: PHASE ONE UNDER WAY

Beautiful music and happy thoughts......

Still feeling tender and now my boss is playing silly buggers(tm). He's messing with my wages and has delayed payment to my account which will cause my DD's to bounce, incurring bank charges. They isn't the first time this has happened. I'm due back on monday but I'm not exactly inspired to go back. Seeing him could possibly make me turn violent.

Think happy thoughts....Think happy thoughts....

The italian Job:

I only briefly looked at the Freedomship website and it does look a bit 'Poseidon adventure'. In the current state of paranioa about terrorism, do they have a plan for an amarda of warships protecting it or something?

My song of the day is Goldfrapp - 'lovely head'.

Normal Science?

Robert K. Merton's famous norms of science-communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism (CUDOS)are the locus classicus
for most understandings of the inimical and unnatural relation of science
and secrecy. Drawing upon his pioneering study of Puritanism and the rise
of the new science of the 17^th century, Merton extracted what he identified as the guiding norms of the scientific community. In an influential 1942 article, Science and Technology in a Democratic Order, Merton articulated his famous norms as a direct defense of the necessary relation of progress in science with democratic politics. ₇ As David Hollinger has observed, Merton made it clear that science could only flourish under a democratic regime, not the fascist regime of Nazi Germany. ₈ Merton
clearly stated that secrecy was the antithesis of his norm of communism,
the belief that scientific knowledge was the common property of all people.
My point here is not to claim that Merton
invented the idea that science and secrecy are anathema. After all, his claim
was that he had identified this practice through his study of the history
of science. Central figures in the so-called Scientific Revolution distinguished
themselves from other knowledge producers because of their emphasis on the
public, and published, character of their knowledge claims. He was merely
making clear to social scientists what natural scientists took as a self-evident
truth, one that was visible from the emergence of the Royal Society in 17^th century England.

For Merton
the problem with secrecy in science was two-fold. First, secret science could
not provide the researcher with the appropriate credit for their discoveries.
Given that the only recognition in Merton's
universe came to those who established their priority in making discoveries
or breakthroughs, secrecy was clearly not in a researcher's self-interest.
While working on a particular problem, researchers might choose not to communicate
with others about their work, but when the work was completed they would
race to publish their findings. Priority was the means to a reputation, to
greater credibility, and to the rewards of science-prizes, grants, and status. ₉
Second, secret knowledge was not open to the scrutiny of others who might
point out errors and problems related to both the production and interpretation
of the knowledge claims. If, as Merton
and others believed, science -worked- through the rigorous self-policing
of knowledge claims, then secrecy or restricting the dissemination of information
might lead to the production of false knowledge. Finally, note that Merton's
norms also created an autonomous social space for science, since only other
scientists could credibly discuss the veracity of specific technical knowledge
claims. Those untrained in the ways of science were incapable of adjudicating
intellectual matters.

If Merton and his students, especially Bernard Barber, ₁₀
were among the prime intellectual sources for the post World War II understanding
of the relationship between science and secrecy, then we must look to the
war itself and the subsequent militarization of American science for the
institutional context in which such discussions began. Here we must make
a historical point. We may think of the war, especially the Manhattan Project,
as the modern occasion for our discussions of science and secrecy, but that
would be a profound mistake. Discussions about secrecy were endemic with
the establishment of the first industrial research laboratories in early
twentieth century America and the great expansion of such laboratories in
the post World War I context, what one observer called a fever of commercial
science. ₁₁
Similarly, the fear that corporate monopolies might control the production
of scientific and technological knowledge, as presented in the Temporary
National Economic Condition (TNEC) Hearings of 1939, was an early analogue
of postwar fears of the military control of science. ₁₂
To an extent we are largely unaware of, wartime discussions of secrecy drew
upon these earlier debates as well as the recognition that for many industry
had not affected science in a negative manner. On the contrary, many began
to conceive of industrial research laboratories as universities in exile,
a view that had little relation to corporate reality. With this caveat, let
us turn to the war.