ABSTRACT

Natural science has been growing exponentially throughout history in terms of its size and scope as a human enterprise. The historic situation regarding the costs of American science was first delineated in the findings of Raymond Ewell in the 1950s. The phenomenon of a logarithmic return on investment in natural science pivots on assessing the quality of the work at issue, since anything deserving of the name of scientific knowledge will be information of the highest quality level. The increasing complexity of the scientific enterprise itself is reflected in the fact that research and development expenditures in the US grew exponentially after World War II, increasing at a rate of some 10 percent per annum. The upshot is that increasing complexity is the unavailable accompaniment of scientific progress as ever more elaborate processes are required to engender an equimeritious product.