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We are delighted to record that this project benefited from the outset from wide-ranging support from the United Nations University, the engine of the project, but also from the International Development Research Centre, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the International Council for Science Policy Studies. We should like to thank in particular the officials of each of these institutions with whom we dealt, who were unstinting in their faith in us and in their support: the Rector of the UNU, naturally, but also his Senior Adviser, Sogo Okamura, and Dieter Koenig, Scientific Affairs Officer; Marc Chapdelaine, Head of the Science, Technology and Society Unit at Unesco, his successor, Vladislav Kotchetkov, and Kotchetkov's consultant, Folin Osotimehin; Brent Herbert-Copley, Programme Officer at IDRC; Everett Mendelsohn, Professor at Harvard University and President of the ICSPS; and Georges Ferné Secretary of the ICSPS, without whose help we should never have been able to carry through this project. We should like also to thank those who contributed during the earlier stages of the preparation of the volume: Roy MacLeod, Professor at the Australian National University; Geoffrey Oldham, Director of the Science Policy Research Unit of the University of Sussex; and Henrique Rattner, Professor at the University of São Paulo. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the support provided throughout the project from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, and the Centre Science, Technologie et Société, in particular from Nadine Glad, and from the World Bank.
We would also like to say how grateful we are to the contributors, not merely for the chapters that they wrote but also for their valuable comments, discussions, and criticisms. If the book gives the impression of being a collective endeavour, conceived and brought to publication in a real spirit of international cooperation, it is thanks as much to them all as to us. Last but not least, we would like to express our gratitude to Ann Johnston, who edited the original English version of the manuscripts, most of them written by authors who are not native English speakers. Moreover, without her tenacity, professionalism, and encouragement, this volume would never have been accomplished.
All parts and all aspects of science belong together. Science cannot develop unless it is pursued for the sake of pure knowledge and insight. It will not survive unless it is used intensely and wisely for the betterment of humanity, and not as an instrument of domination by one group over another. Human existence depends upon compassion and curiosity. Curiosity without compassion is inhuman; compassion without curiosity is ineffectual.
Victor F. Weisskopf