The battles that began in the 1970s produced “institutional innovations” across the landscape of academic science and industrial research. These innovations were not limited to top-down actors, but also infused bottom-up activism – and state and local experimentation – that effectively democratized science, technology, and the public interest in ways never envisioned (or even favored) by Vannevar Bush.
Mahmud Farooque’s brilliant and comprehensive essay, “Science: A Long Wave,” is a timely and cogent reminder — amid the recent outpouring of reports and studies inspired by the “long tail” of Vannevar Bush’s Endless Frontier report of 1945 – that during the 1970s Americans saw a second revolutionary wave in policies and practices of science and technology in the public interest. This new wave of the 1970s transformed public spending on scientific and engineering research in ways that deviated sharply and definitively from Bush’s original vision borne of the second world war and the atomic explosions of August 1945. Departing from Bush’s vision of “pure” civilian research, unfettered by political, social and economic considerations, the new wave of the 1970s promoted research for use-inspired outcomes and enlisted scientists and engineers in support of concrete civilian social missions that profoundly altered the American wave of life, putting technocrats at the center of health, transportation and the relations of humans and the natural world.
Confidence that science and engineering could transition from the cloistered academy and secretive military labs to the core of America’s “open society” arose partly from the success of the Apollo project, which in the 1960s was the nation’s foremost civilian techno-science enterprise, culminating in the remarkable moon landing of July 1969. The success of Apollo and its master agency, NASA, nourished confidence in the potential for directed research to improve the daily lives of Americans. In his superb “long wave” essay, my colleague, Dr. Farooque, deftly charts the various national policy moves that made federal research policy more egalitarian, geographically diverse and tuned to broader socio-economic goals.
But an examination of the policy moves from above should not blind us to the change-drivers from below. Drawing on the scholarship of the late Thomas Hughes, notably in his essay on the influence of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, in his seminal study of technological change, American Genesis, I argue that the key driver for an expanded agenda for publicly-funded science and technology came from below – from activists, rebels and dissenters as well as scientists and engineers disenchanted with top-down mobilization of research.
While top-down support – from Congress and the Republican President, Richard Nixon — was essential for these progressive science-based initiatives, bottoms up drivers in the form of social movements and prominent advocates for expanded mission-oriented civilian research was perhaps more important. Ralph Nader’s criticisms of the neglect by automakers of safety – gathered in his 1965 book, Unsafe At Any Speed – awakened the public to the perils of driving and the need for more regulation over cars, highways and driveways. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), about the dangers of pesticides in the environment, at first drew sharp resistance but later fueled a powerful movement to regulate, and in some cases, ban, the worst of commonly applied chemicals. Theodore Roszak published The Making of a Counter Culture (1969) argued that much of the energy for radical challenges to American life had roots in the rebellion by youth of what Roszak described as a “technocratic society,” where machines, data and systems were overwhelming the individual and erasing human choice. In The Closing Circle (1971) and The Poverty of Power (1976), Barry Commoner insisted that the relentless exploitation of resources and the environment through advanced technologies was ultimately unsustainable and required new forms of economic organization and a revolution in human attitudes towards technique.
Under pressure from below, the “establishment” responded. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was launched on March 20, 1970. The same year saw the formation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency was established. Two years later, in 1972, the Clean Water Act created the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters. The basis of the CWA was enacted in 1948 and was called the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, but the Act was significantly reorganized and expanded in the “Clean Water Act” of 1972.
Over time, these civilian agencies built cadres of scientists, engineers and technicians that embraced the task of infusing social outcomes with expertise. These agencies grew alongside the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, altering the character of public support for research and blurring, if not erasing, the line between unfettered inquiry and the pursuit of technical solutions to everyday problems in a democracy.
As “Science: the Long Wave” by Dr. Farooque reminds us, the battles that began in the 1970s produced “institutional innovations” across the landscape of academic science and industrial research. These innovations were not limited to top-down actors, but also infused bottom-up activism – and state and local experimentation – that effectively democratized science, technology, and the public interest in ways never envisioned (or even favored) by Vannevar Bush.
— G. Pascal Zachary is the author of Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century, and the editor of The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush.