Conference: “Basic and Applied Research”. Bonn, 20 Feb 2014
Date: 20-22 February 2014
Location: Bonner Universitätsforum, Heussallee
18-24, 53113 Bonn,
Germany
The conference brings together researchers
from the interdisciplinary
field of science studies to discuss the
origins, meanings and
transformations of the distinction between
“basic research” and
“applied research” in the course of the 20th
century. The aim is to
compare how this key distinction of science
and research policy has
been handled by diverse ideological regimes of
the 20th century, for
example by the totalitarian regimes during
World War II, by the
liberal-democratic regimes of the West or by
the socialist regimes of
the East during the Cold War era, by
decolonized states in the
Commonwealth and by the recent innovation
regimes of supranational entities such as the EU.
In the last decades, several authors have
noticed with surprise that
the basic/applied distinction and the
notorious linear model of
innovation persist both within science stud-ies
and in science and
innovation policy, although they have been
deconstructed as analytically flawed.
Thus, on the one hand, it is common usage to
distinguish between
“basic research” and “applied research” while,
on the other hand, the
inadequacy of the-se categories is often
debated. This paradox can be
solved if one analyzes the respective concepts
as historical semantics.
Such a change of perspective raises some
central questions that will
be addressed in the contributions to the conference:
Which specific
terms have been used in different historical
and national contexts?
What is the pragmatic function underlying the
different forms of
usage? Do these opposing notions epitomize
diverging ideas or
ideologies concerning the goal of science in
general? What kind of
careers and trajectories did these concepts
have, when observing them
in retrospect? For example, why did the idea
of “basic research” become so important after 1945?
Program
Thursday, 20 February 2014
2:00 – 2:45 pm Introduction:
The Role of Semantics in Science Policy and in
Science Studies (David
Kaldewey/University of Bonn and Désirée
Schauz/University of
Technology,
Munich)
2:45 – 5:30 pm Longue-durée Perspectives on
the Basic/Applied
Distinction
Basic Research and Innovation: The ‘New’
Semantic Pair (Benoît
Godin/Institut national de la recherche
scientifique, University of
Montreal)
Talking, and Not Talking, about ‘Applied
Science’: Promoting a Culture
of the Twentieth Century Public Sphere (Robert
Bud/The Science Museum,
London)
Coffee break
From ‘Natural’ Authority to Tactics and the
Conduct of Conducts. The
Politics of Knowledge Between the 1950s and
the 2000s (Dominique
Pestre/L’École des
Haute Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
5:30 – 7:30 pm Academic and Industrial
Research
Rewriting Applied Science: Purifying Histories
of Knowledge-Making
(Graeme Gooday/University of Leeds)
The Entrepreneur, the Laboratory, the Investor
and the State: Changing
Concepts of Innovation in the Twentieth
Century (Lea Haller/Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology Zurich)
7:30 pm Dinner
Friday, 21 February 2014
9:00 – 11:45 am German Research Policy in
Fascist, Liberal and
Communist Contexts Science Policy in Search of
New Semantics: Basic
Research in the Era of the Second World War
(Désirée Schauz/University
of Technology, Munich)
‘Grundlagenforschung’ and ‘Anwendungsforschung’
in Science Policy
Contexts in Western-Germany after World War II
(Gregor Lax/University
of Bielefeld)
Coffee break
Basic and Applied Research in GDR Science
Policy (Manuel
Schramm/Technical University of Chemnitz)
11:45 am – 3:30 pm Research policy in
Communist Countries
From ‘Planning Science’ to ‘Goal-oriented
Research’: Soviet Science
Policy in Cross-ideological Encounters (Alexei
Kojevnikov/University
of British Columbia)
Lunch break
Theory versus (Policy Oriented) Empirical
Research: Economics in
State-Socialist Hungary after Stalin (György
Péteri/Norwegian
University of Science &Technology,
Trondheim)
White Flags in a Red Tide: Debates Over Basic
vs. Applied Research in
the Politics of Science in Modern China
(Zuoyue Wang/California State
Polytechnic University, Pomona)
3:30 – 5:30 pm Research Strategies in Colonial
and Postcolonial
Contexts Why Was Fundamental Research Deemed
Necessary for Colonial
Development after 1940? (Sabine
Clarke/University of York)
Coffee break
On the Necessity of a Disjunction: Science,
Government and
Industrialisation in Free India (Jahnavi
Phalkey/King’s College
London)
5:30 – 7:30 pm American Research Policy in National
and Transnational
Perspective Basic Research as a Political
Symbol (Roger
Pielke/University of Colorado Boulder)
Regulating the Transnational Circulation of
Knowledge: Dissolving the
Basic/Applied Science Distinction (John
Krige/Georgia Institute of
Technology)
Saturday, 22 February 2014
9:00 am – 12:30 pm Old and New Semantics in
the 21th Century
Basic and Applied Research: How Engineers and
Industrial Scientists
Use the Distinction (Rudolf
Stichweh/University of Bonn)
The Emergence of the European Research
Council: Hijacking Basic
Research by Geopolitical and Market Semantics
(Tim Flink/Social
Science Research Center Berlin)
Coffee break
‘Tackling the Grand Challenges’: The New
Rhetorics of Applied Research
in EU Science Policy (David
Kaldewey/University of Bonn)
Concluding Discussion
The conference fee is 50€ (reduced 25€) and
includes coffee and
beverages, dinner on Thursday and lunch on
Friday.
Please register by February 1, 2014. For further
information, please
visit our website: www.fiw.uni-bonn.de/fiw-veranstaltungen
The conference is supported by the Rectorate
of the University of
Bonn, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and
the Forum
Internationale Wissenschaft (FIW).
Organizers:
David Kaldewey
Forum Internationale Wissenschaft, University
of Bonn, Heussallee
18-24,
D-53113 Bonn, kaldewey@uni-bonn.de
Désirée Schauz
Munich Centre for the History of Science and
Technology, c/o Deutsches
Museum, D-86306 Munich, desiree.schauz@mzwtg.mwn.de
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Dr. Désirée Schauz
Münchner Zentrum für Wissenschafts- und
Technikgeschichte c/o
Deutsches Museum Museumsinsel 1
80538 München
Tel.: 089-2179.407, Fax: 089-2179.408
Email: Desiree.Schauz@mzwtg.mwn.de