What Have We Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience? · Default Product

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At the time the Soviet Union broke apart in the late 1980’s, it possessed the largest scientific community in the world. The rapid development, in just a few decades, of such an immense scientific establishment—in a social and economic environment strikingly different from the West—presents an unusual opportunity for the world’s leading authority on Soviet science to examine how the Russian experience sheds light on the status and character of science and technology throughout the world. The book is organized around five questions, each given its own chapter: “Is Science a Social Construction?” “Are Science and Technology Westernizing Influences?” “ How Robust Is Science Under Stress?” “ How Willing Are Scientists to Reform Their Own Institutions?” and “Who Should Control Technology?” The author believes that the Russian example reveals in detail both the strengths and the weaknesses of social constructivism. Though many areas of Russian science show the unmistakable influence of social factors, the deviation of the Soviet Union from standard genetics for many years, followed by its eventual restoration, indicates the weakness of social constructivism and illustrates the relationsh

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