ABSTRACT
A very important feature of the social problems of contemporary science is their novelty. The loss of innocence of science is even deeper than Kapitsa indicated. Science is not merely harnessed to industry; it can be applied to produce effects which for some centuries, since the decline of belief in magic and miracles, had been thought impossible. Traditionally, the image of science has been of a work which is demanding, and also productive, of the highest standards of morality. Nostalgia for the bygone simplicities of particular fields of science can exaggerate the depth and novelty of the social problems of contemporary science, and thereby hinder their solution. The example and ideals of academic science, on a model derived from Germany, remained vigorous well into the current century. ‘Science’ has been understood as pure, university-based science, in spite of an involvement of science in the First World War so deep that it has been called ‘the chemists’ war’.
