Strategies for Europe: Proposals for science and technology policies

Strategies for Europe: Proposals for science and technology policies

Books best paper in the volume: he shows how various forecasts of activity are linked to resources, using the Grampians as his case study. Papers by ...

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Books

best paper in the volume: he shows how various forecasts of activity are linked to resources, using the Grampians as his case study. Papers by Grey and Cox on housing forecasts provide a useful review of problems of housing balance and projection methods. Smedley, in the final paper describes a computer system suitable for the ‘naive’ user, which will integrate diverse forecasts in physical planning. These papers provide a useful stateof-the-art summary, but they do not in any way inspire confidence that planners are really getting to grips with the problem of integrating all these diverse instruments. Most of the ideas presented seem to emanate from experience at work, as revealed by the references cited (or lack of them). The

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disturbing implication is that academics have little or nothing to say about policy. Low morale and pessimism But there are wider and more fundamental issues exposed here. In particular, these papers show the low morale and pessimism prevalent in current British planning. It appears that after a century of institutionalised planning in the UK, planners have ended up mainly concerned with making sense of the instruments they themselves have created. If this indeed is true, then it is high time that planners returned to their traditional concerns, in an effort to break out of the bureaucracy which is strangling them and their initiative.

In search of European science Roy MacLeod Strategies for Europe: Proposals for Science and Technology Policies

edited by Maurice Goldsmith 164 pages, &lo, $20 (Oxford Pergamon, 1978)

andNew

York,

For over 200 years, a distinguished line of European philosophers has seen in the applications of natural knowledge the promise of a ‘great instauration’, a new philosophy to raise nations above civil and sectarian strike. Within the last century, the vocabulary of scientific internationalism has even become part of the language of political negotiation. And particularly since the last war, this enduring understanding of science (or Wissen.rcha$) as transnational, intellectual experience has become translated in Western Europe into a belief in the role of science Roy MacLeod is Professor of Science Education at the University of London Institute for Education, Bedford Way, London WClH OAL, UK.

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Auaust 1978

as a means towards political union. Scientific institutions, it is said, already share similar values and similar aims; why should they not be in the vanguard of a United States of Europe? The European grail In recent years, the EEC has attempted to determine how science and technology can serve this end. The problem, as it is commonly put, has become an almost spiritual questin the words of Dr Giinter Schuster, head of the EEC directorate-general for research, science, and education-“to foster those intellectual and moral energies which will enable it [Europe] to rethink and reshape its political and cultural destiny on this planet”. The search for this secular grail of community selfrealisation has prompted many meetings. This volume consists of an apparently verbatim record of the

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proceedings of one such conference, held in Brussels in 1977 under the cosponsorship of the EEC and the Science Policy Foundation of London. A curate’s

egg

Collections of this kind are usually curate’s eggs, and this appears no less true in the common market. It would be otiose to observe that material presented in this form is often anecdotal, and rarely of uniform intellectual merit. Easy books make easy critics. But the reader should not be deterred by the ambitious (and misleading) title, nor by the pages devoted to chairmanly pleasantries which were never intended for cold print. Nor should the reader be put off by the rather self-regarding publicity of the Science Policy Foundation. Beneath the weight of the book’s organisational rhetoric lie several instructive essays by familiar international figures. Brian Flowers sets out a clear account of the objectives of the European Science Foundation; Jean-Jacques Salomon reviews the hopes and limitations of policies involving the social sciences through the last two decades; Umberto Colombo offers a coup d’oeil of Western European policies for industrial innovation; Philip Ritterbush gives an instructive and well written view of American and European attempts to transmit ‘science’ to the and Shridath Ramphal concitizen; cludes with forceful comments on Europe’s relations with the Third world. The proceedings are ably introduced by Giinter Schuster, whose role has been at different times both that of a catalyst and an active agent. Arguably, it is clear that European countries face common problems, the solution to which may be found more easily in common. But some may take exception both to this message, and its medium. There are universally accepted arguments for international collaboration in research and learning; for

cultivating sound strategies of industrial innovation; and for developing realistic policies towards the Third world. These arguments often revolve around the need to obtain economies of scale in big science; to secure collective action in dealing with environmental and other technological issues; and to ensure the unarguable benefits of international scientific mobility. There are, however, dangers of false consciousness implicit in any such programme. For example, it is deceptively easy for participants at conferences like these to speak of (and for) Europe in the imperial singular. But to what extent can European Community policies be realistically ‘common’, or even ‘European’ ? As most would admit, Community enterprise in science can appear as merely a Potemkin facade, good intentions without material backing. What price Community conationalism within the larger context of East-West, North-South, and superpower endeavthe very fact that our ? Moreover, science is international makes it difficult to invest preferentially in a ‘European’ science policy-especially when one considers that only Western Europe (and only a part of Western Europe at that), is principally involved. Science cannot be isolated If there is one lesson to be learned from the last 20 years of policy making for science, it is surely that discussions of science policies may begin by speaking of science, but almost universally end by discussing economics and politics. Policies for science and technology can no longer neglect the political and economic basis of power in those areas where public and private interest intersect. This volume forcibly reminds us, if that is necessary, of the limited role of science (and social science) as conventionally understood, in securing remedies to the immediate structural and economic difficulties confronting

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Books/Publications Received

advanced industrial society. It also demonstrates that high-sounding strategies for Europe are not necessarily the way to approach a favourable balance of opportunity costs in employment, education, and social justice. As one of the participants remarked, Europe is a “huge social laboratory”: so it is, but many people are not content to be regarded as passive volunteers in a grand experiment in Eurocracy. Such reflections, however, are a logical consequence of this method of conference making, which relies, in conventional fashion, upon a selected cross-section of the establishment. The EEC, and especially Dr Schuster, have taken an able and influential role in organising efforts to “examine what is being done in science and technology, to determine what action to take at a community level, and to provide a forum for consultation, information and exchange”.

PUBLICATIONS

August 187)

So far as it goes, this activity is welcome, and much needed. However, to take some license with language, in scientific and technological affairs, it seems the EEC has been given a commission, but has not yet found a role. If, as is hoped, the EEC continues to support activities in this area, then it should reach beyond the professoriate and the elite of transnational science, to cultivate some sense of broader ‘Community interests’, and to sustain discussion among small working groups of interested scholars and citizens. In the absence of other venues, there is much room for the EEC to encourage this discussion within a wide European perspective, and to disseminate effectively and cheaply (and not at a prohibitive $10 per volume) the published results. These opportunities should be seized and shared. By such means, perhaps, and at some distance, on peut faire I’Europe.

RECEIVED

A. Alcock, B. Taylor, and J. M. Welton, Future of Cultural Minorities (London, Macmillan, 1979), 221 pages, E12. D. Allen, Hospital Planning (Tunbridge Wells, Pitman Medical, 1979), 191 pages, no price stated. Richard P. Appelbaum, Size, Growth and US Cities (Eastbourne, Praeger, 1978), 140 pages, no price stated. M. J. Backmann and H. P. Ktinzi, Lecture YVotes in Economics and Mathematics (Berlin, Springer, 1978), 164 pages, DM 21.50, $11.80. Philippe Barret, Scenariospour La France de 1’An 2000 (Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1978), 249 pages, no price stated. Iann Barron and Ray Curnow, The Future with Microelectronics (London, Frances Pinter, 1979), 243 pages, E7.95. B. A. Bayraktar et al, eds, Education in Systems Science (Basingstoke, Taylor and Francis, 1979) 369 pages, &12. Guy Berger and Colette Berger-Forestier, The European Workshops : Environment and Culture : 77te Rural Socie@ (Paris, GREP, 1979), 23 pages, no price stated. Frank Blackaby, De-industrialisation (London, Heinemann Educational, 1979), 275 pages, paper L5.50, cloth fl.50.

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Kenneth E. Boulding, Ecodynamics: a New Theory of Societal Evolution (Beverly Hills, Sage, 1978), 368 pages, $15. Roger A. Bowles and David K. Whyncs, Macroeconomic Planning (Hemel Hempstead, George Allen and Unwin, 1979), 202 pages, L3.95. James R. Bright, Practical Technology Forecasting: Concepts and Exercises (Austin, The Industrial Management Center, 1978), 351 pages, no price stated. Michael 2. Brooke and Mark van Beusekom, International Corporate Planning (London, Pitman, 1979), 323 pages, E9.50. Brendan Brown, Money Hard and Soft: on the International Currency Markets (London, Macmillan, 1978), 183 pages, ElO. William M. Brown and Herman Kahn, Longterm Prospects for Developments in Space: a Scenario Approach (New York, Hudson Institute, 1977j, 300 pages, no price stated. Robert W. Burchell and George Sternlieb. Planning Theory in the 1980s: a Seirch for Future Directions (New Jersey, Center for Urban Policy Research, 1978), 365 pages, no price stated. Gerard Calot et al, P@ulatian Decline in Europe (Maidenhead, Edward Arnold, 1978), 254 pages, E14.95.