Un clima para la ciencia by Manuel Lora Tamayo, and

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 113 K. C. Abercrombie (“Population Growth and Agricultural Develop­ ment,” Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural Economics and Statistics [April 1969], pp. 1-9). These issues would likely play a greater role in a contemporary work. But most of the points discussed in this book remain of basic importance and will be relevant for a long time to come. Thus the book has enough timeless qualities to earn its place easily on the shelf of anyone seriously interested in the economic aspects of agri­ cultural development. Dana G. Dalrymple* Un clima para la ciencia. By Manuel Lora Tamayo. Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1969. Pp. 150. Pts. 70. El Opus Dei en España. By Daniel Artigues. Vol. I. Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1968. Pp. 169. National Reports of the Pilot Teams, Science and Development, Spain. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1968. Pp. 279; statistical appendix. $3.80. La educación en España: Bases para una política educativa. Madrid: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, 1969. Pp. 244. Tables. Pts. 100. The retardation of scientific and technological development in modern Spain has been the subject of anxious and troubled discussion among Spanish intellectuals since the 18th century. Liberal thinkers such as the enlightened monk Benito Feijóo (1676-1764) and the histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) traced the roots of backwardness to the isolation of Spain from the rest of Europe and, equally, to the orthodox establishment’s fear of new ideas. But recent studies of the censorship policies of the Inquisition, for example, have shown that it failed to erect a barrier totally impermeable to alien ideas. Modern ideas have been received in Spain; the problem lies in their scant diffusion. The 19th-century conservative historian, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (1856-1912), rejecting the notion that traditional Catholicism had been incompatible with modern science, sought to explain deca­ dence by examining the internal structure of scientific research in Spain. In his view, Spanish scientific production since the 16th century has been mostly utilitarian in nature. Concentration on applied sciences such as metallurgy and the neglect of pure sciences such as mathe­ matics and physics were at the heart of Spain’s failure to produce any viable scientific tradition. Moreover, a faulty and incohesive university structure prevented individual scientific geniuses, which Spain has somehow been able to produce, from being able to pass * Dr. Dalrymple is an international economist with the Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. 114 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE along a tradition of pure scientific research to their successors. Menéndez y Pelayo’s critique forms the basis of Manuel Lora Tamayo’s analysis of the problems involved in creating a “climate for science” in Spain. In Lora’s view, that climate is to be created through the double process of state financial backing and promoting a high value for science in society, through education. The articles comprising the book are mainly public addresses given during Lora’s tenure as education minister and concern themselves, on the one hand, with the formal institutionalization of science and the creation of a public science policy in Spain and, on the other, with problems of scientific education and the diffusion of scientific knowledge. In addition there are some chapters of general interest on the vocation of the researcher, the nature of research, and the nature of scientific truth. The most significant essays, however, are the two which deal with the progress and status of science in Spain at two distinct points in time, 1949 and 1969. In his introduction he states: “I consider that the rupture of the classical unity of knowledge, creating among its parts a mutual posture of indifference, is one of the signs of the crisis of the moment, and I firmly hold the belief in the necessity of a harmonic growth of all the sciences” (p. 10). The instrument for achieving a new unity of the sciences was the Higher Council for Scientific Research (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas [CSIC]) founded in 1939 at the conclusion of the Spanish Civil War. In the 1969 survey Lora gives a tally sheet

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