A Road Not Taken

Economists, Historians of Science, and the Making of the Bowman Report

Bibliographic Data

ID4889907
AuthorsRoger E Backhouse (0000-0003-2393-6517, University of Birmingham), H Maas (0000-0002-5094-0477, University of Lausanne)
Year2017
Volume108
Issue1
Pages82-106
Publication date2017-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueIsis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/691421
PMID29897707
OpenAlexW2596492671
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited20

This essay investigates a hitherto-unexamined collaboration between two of the founders of modern history of science, Henry Guerlac and I. Bernard Cohen, and two economists, Paul Samuelson and Rupert Maclaurin. The arena in which these two disciplines came together was the Bowman Committee, one of the committees that prepared material for Vannevar Bush’s Science—The Endless Frontier. The essay shows how their collaboration helped to shape the committee’s recommendations, in which different models of science confronted each other. It then shows how, despite this success, the basis for long-term collaboration of economists and historians of science disappeared, because the resulting linear model of science and technology separated the study of scientific and economic progress into noncommunicating boxes

Economic history · Economic science · Epistemology · Frontier · History of science · Political science · Social science · Sociology · History · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Research, Science, and Academia · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments