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31 Goonatilake, S. Aborted Discovery: Science and Creativity in the Third World. London: Zed Books, 1984.
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33 Herrera, A. Ciencia y política en América Latina. Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1971.
34 Home, R., ed. The Shaping of Australian Science. Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
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36 Inkster, I. "Meiji Economic Development in Perspective: Revisionist Comments Upon the Industrial Revolution in Japan." The Developing Economies 17 (1979), no. 1: 45-68.
37 Inkster, I. "Scientific Enterprise and the Colonial 'Model': Observations on Australian Experience in a Historical Context." Social Studies of Science 15 (1985), no. 4: 677-704.
38 Jami, C. "Western Mathematics in China, Seventeenth Century and Nineteenth Century." In: Petitjean et al., eds., pp. 79-88. See ref. 57.
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43 Lutz, G.W. China and the Christian Colleges 1850-1950. Ithaca: Cornell, 1971.
44 MacLeod, R. "On Visiting the 'Moving Metropolis': Reflections on the Architecture of Imperial Science." In: Reingold and Rothenberg, eds. See ref. 68.
45 MacLeod, R. "The Contradictions of Progress." Sydney: University of Sydney, 1991. Unpublished manuscript.
46 Márquez Miranda. F. Ameghino: Una vida heroica. Buenos Aires: Nova, 1951.
47 Moulin, A.M. "Patriarchal Science: The Network of the Overseas Pasteur Institutes." In: Petitjean et al., eds., pp. 307-320. See ref. 57.
48 Moyal, A. Scientists in Nineteenth Century Australia. Sydney: Cassell Australia, 1987.
49 Nakayama, S. Characteristics of Scientific Development in Japan. New Delhi: CSIR, 1977.
50 Nakayama, S., D.L. Swain, and Y. Eri, eds. Science and Society in Modern Japan: Selected Historical Sources. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1974.
51 Pagden, A. "Identity Formation in Spanish America." In: N. Canny and A. Pagden, eds. Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 51-93.
52 Paul, H.W. From Knowledge to Power: The Rise of the Science Empire in France 1860-1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
53 Perrot, D., and R. Preiswerk. Ethnocentrisme et histoire: L'Afrique, l'Amérique indienne et l'Asie dans les manuels occidentaux. Paris: Anthropos, 1975.
54 Petitjean, P. "Le Groupement des Universités et Grandes Ecoles de France pour les Relations avec l'Amérique Latine, et la creation d'Instituts a Rio, São Paulo et Buenos Aires (190711940)." Anais do Segundo Congresso Latino Americano de História da Ciência e da Tecnologia. São Paulo: Nova Stella, 1989, pp. 428-442.
55 Petitjean, P. "Autour de la mission française pour la création de l'Université de São Paulo (1934)." In: Petitjean et al., eds., pp. 339-362. See ref. 57.
56 Petitjean, P. "La cooperation France-Amérique Latine." Paper presented at the Third Latin American Congress for the History of Science, Mexico City, 12 16 January 1992.
57 Petitjean, P., C. Jami, and A.M. Moulin, eds. Science and Empires: Historical Studies about Scientific Development and European Expansion. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press, 1992.
58 Platt, D.C.M., and G. Di Tella, eds. Argentina, Australia, and Canada: Studies in Comparative Development, 1870-1965. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985.
59 Porter, J. "The Scientific Community in Early Modern China." Isis 73 (1982), no. 269: 529-544.
60 Pyenson, L. "The Incomplete Transmission of a European Image: Physics at Greater Buenos Aires and Montreal, 1890-1920." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 122 (1978), pp. 92-114.
61 Pyenson, L. "In Partibus Infidelium: Imperialist Rivalries and Exact Sciences in Early Twentieth-Century Argentina." Quipu 1 (1984).
62 Pyenson, L. Cultural Imperialism and Exact Sciences: German Expansion Overseas 1900-1930. New York: Peter Lang, 1985.
63 Pyenson, L. Empire of Reason: Exact Sciences in Indonesia, 1840-1940. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989.
64 Pyenson, L. "Pure Learning and Political Economy: Science and European Expansion in the Age of Imperialism." In: R.P.W. Visser et al., eds. New Trends in the History of Science. Proceedings of a conference held at the University of Utrecht. Amsterdam/Atlanta, Gal: Rodopi, 1989.
65 Raj, K. "Hermeneutics and Cross-Cultural Communication in Science: The Reception of Western Scientific Ideas in 19th Century India." Revue de Synthèse. 4ème série, nos. 1, 2 (January-June 1986): 107-120.
66 Reingold, N. "Reflections on 200 Years of Science in the United States." In: N. Reingold, ed. The Sciences in the American Context: New Perspectives. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979.
67 Reingold, N. "Graduate School and Doctoral Degree: European Models and American Realities." In: Reingold and Rothenberg, eds. See ref. 68.
68 Reingold, N., and M. Rothenberg. eds. Scientific Colonialism: A Cross Cultural Comparison. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987.
69 Ríos, S., L. Santaló, and M. Balanzat. Julio Rey Pastor matemático. Madrid: Instituto de España, 1979.
70 Roca Rosell, A., and J.M. Sánchez Ron. Esteban Terradas: Ciencia y técnica en la España, contemporánea. Madrid and Barcelona: Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial/Ediciones del Serbal, 1990.
71 Romero, J.L. El desarrollo de las ideas en la sociedad argentina del siglo XX. Mexico/Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965.
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73 Safford, F. The Ideal of the Practical: Colombia's Struggle to Form a Technical Elite. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1976.
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75 Sagasti, F., and C. Cook. Tiempos difíciles: ciencia y tecnología en América Latina durante el decenio de 1980. Lima: GRADE, 1985.
76 Sagasti, F. et al. Conocimiento y desarrollo: ensayos sobre ciencia y tecnología. Lima: GRADE-Mosca Azul, 1988.
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6 The behaviour of scientists and scientific communities
Jacques Gaillard
The scientific communities in developing
countries
The origins, behaviours, and conditions of
scientists
Scientific production: Not very visible
Concluding remarks
References
There is a relatively large storehouse of documents and reports on science and technology policies in the developing countries, often prepared for international conferences such as the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development in 1979 in Vienna. That said, it must be recognized that these official documents mainly contain statements of intent and that our knowledge of science, scientists, and scientific communities in developing countries is very incomplete. There is also a fairly abundant literature on third world science scattered through numerous journals, seminar reports, and proceedings, but there are far too few empirical studies. The late Professor Moravcsik [61] provided one of the most complete bibliographies on this subject, which covers literature up to the early 1970s, but research on science in developing countries is still an unexplored and fruitful area [62]. A decision was taken in October 1990 at the International Conference on Science Indicators for Developing Countries in Paris to create an international association interested in science in developing countries; one of its tasks would be to update Moravcsik's bibliography [5].
Generally on the basis of national statistics compiled by organizations such as Unesco and the OECD, certain authors have emphasized the shortcomings of the research systems in developing countries and the shortage of available resources [71]. Other authors have matched socioeconomic conditions against the level of scientific development in these countries. In some of his writings, Price [66] gives quantitative indicators for the developing countries. Research by Garfield [39] and his Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia (ISI) points to the low productivity of third world scientists, the difference in productivity levels, and degrees of dependency (articles by scientists from developing countries have greater impact when co-authored by scientists from industrialized countries). Using the ISI database, quantitative analyses of mainstream scientific literature, i.e. articles in internationally read publications, were made at the continental and national levels. One such bibliometric study on mainstream science in Singapore recently showed that articles written by national scientists and published in international journals were very rarely cited [2]. Other authors, such as Frame et al. [30], provide interesting general information on the respective ranking of various developing countries and on the distribution and orientation of scientific disciplines there.
There has also been relatively little research on the scientists who make up the third world scientific communities, or on how these communities are emerging and reproducing. The comparative study made by T.O. Eisemon [26] was until recently among the few exceptions. He interviewed teachers/scientists in the mathematics and zoology departments at the universities of Ibadan and Nairobi in 1978 and concluded that:
the achievements of Nigerian and Kenyan science are primarily quantitative and in the sphere of construction of an institutional framework for scientific research. Science teaching programmes have been developed, scientific societies established, publishing institutions formed. These are not trivial accomplishments in my view. Nevertheless, it is also true that scientific work - in a more substantial sense - has not been much advanced.... Nor have hopes for rapid scientific development been realised. A much longer time will be required before a conclusive judgement can be passed on the effective implementation of the scientific "ethos" in Black Africa.
Thus, most developing countries are still in the institutionalization and professionalization stage. The initial institutional structure has been created, but its material expression - scientific research - has not yet been institutionalized, i.e. has not been recognized as a fully fledged component of society. Another study on science in Mexico suggests that, as in the other developing countries, there are fewer scientists than alleged. The study concludes by saying that the "Mexican scientific community is like an army which has too many generals and too much equipment but which lacks soldiers, particularly well trained soldiers" [73, p. 404]. During the 1980s a number of additional comprehensive studies were carried out and published [50], particularly on Latin American scientific communities, e.g. on Peru [42], a very detailed survey of 218 scientists, unfortunately still unpublished, Brazil [74, 10-12, 16, 17], and Venezuela [1, 81, 4, 69].
In reality most of these studies tend to show that none of the developing countries has a genuine scientific community, not even India, which numerically is among the five largest scientific communities in the world [77], or Brazil [74]. What an Indian scientist had to say about research practices in his country is most revealing: "There is no scientific community in this country.... I meet my colleagues only abroad. I meet my colleagues even from Delhi abroad.... In a well-knit community, where you are exchanging preprints, things are happening and there is excitement. There is no excitement here. Our excitement comes by mail from outside. It depends on the postal system. This is the worst part; the spirit is dead" [77, p. 587]. This dependence on the outside environment, in other words the West, is a constant refrain among many third world scientists. Consequently, since the knowledge formation process in their countries is largely influenced and determined by the West, a considerable part of their scientific output is foreign to the area where it is produced. Another common feature of these scientific communities is the difficulty for many of them to reproduce themselves [35].
These recent studies confirm what Stevan Dedijer wrote in the early 1960s, when he said that,
in the underdeveloped countries scientists suffer from isolation from each other, and thus they do not have the benefits of the stimulation of the presence of persons working in closely related fields. They are in danger, a danger to which they too often succumb, of losing contacts with their colleagues in the international scientific community. They feel peripheral and out of touch with the important developments in science unless they can visit and be visited by important scientists from the more developed countries; they feel inferior and neglected because their own journals and organs of publication, where they exist at all, are seldom read by foreign scientists, seldom quoted in the literature and are indeed often neglected by their own colleagues at home. They have little contact with their colleagues in neighbouring underdeveloped countries. They are in brief not fully-fledged members of the international scientific community and their work suffers accordingly. [25, pp. 80-81]
Close to 30 years have gone by since these words were written, and we have to admit that they still ring true.
The scientific communities in developing countries
Scientific community: A concept open to
challenge
The widening gap and the need for a revised
typology
National scientific communities and styles of
science
Scientific community: A concept open to challenge
The concept of scientific community is today widely used by philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science, as well as, though to a lesser extent, administrators. "It is probably no exaggeration to say that the notion which has been most frequently associated with the social organization of science is that of the scientific community" [49, p. 164]. It is, however, of rather recent origin, appearing in the context of industrialized countries in the early 1940s. Its meaning varies for different authors and in different contexts, and its use, as a methodological tool, has recently been challenged.
The concept of scientific community, as a community in the sociological sense, clearly has a variety of meanings. In its broad sense, it refers to a group of scientists sharing the same attitudes, norms, and values. It is also being used, in a narrower way, to characterize a group of scientists active in a specific field of science. All the scientists active in a country are said to form a "national" scientific community, whereas most scientists claim to belong to the "international" scientific community. Thus, the same concept is used for various levels and with different meanings to describe the world, or international, scientific community and down to small groups of specialists. Furthermore, as correctly stated in an article by Struan Jacobs [47], the existence of scientific communities is assumed without question or argument in the works of leading contemporary philosophers of science (Kuhn, Popper, Toulmin, Lakatos, Hacking et al.), as in many historical studies.
According to several authors, the concept of scientific community was explicitly defined for the first time in the lecture by Michael Polanyi in 1942 to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society [43]. For Polanyi, the members of the scientific community, or "Republic of Science," should be given the maximum of liberty: "The Republic of Science is a Society of Explorers. Such a society strives towards an unknown future, which it believes to be accessible and worth achieving. In the case of scientists, the explorers strive towards a hidden reality, for the sake of intellectual satisfaction. And as they satisfy themselves, they enlighten all men and are thus helping society to fulfill its obligation towards intellectual self-improvement" [65, p. 19]. The concept was then used in the 1950s by other authors (e.g. Barber [6]; Shils [76]; Kuhn [53]) and it became a key concept in the sociology of science in the 1960s [8].
It was also in the early 1940s that the sociology of science started to emerge as a discipline, soon dominated by the functionalism of Robert Merton and his school. The Mertonian "normative structure of science" defines a number of ideal norms and values (universalism, communism, organized scepticism, and disinterestedness) that scientists are believed to share [60]. For Merton, science is organized according to an idealized model. Most of its work tends to view the scientific community as if it were a separate social system, without taking into account its relations with other elements of the society to which it belongs. Most of the works until the 1970s, while criticizing the normative Mertonian approach, have also tended to consider the scientific community as an autonomous entity.
Warren Hagstrom [44] analysed the mechanisms of social control, and particularly the reward systems, acting to ensure the autonomy of the scientific community and its reproduction and growth. It is one of the most important and comprehensive works on the subject. Ben-David [8, p. 4], while recognizing that "science is conceived as the activity of a human group (the scientific community or, rather, communities specialized by fields)," suggests that "this group is so effectively insulated from the outside world that the characteristics of the different societies in which scientists live and work can, for many intents and purposes, be disregarded." I shall come back to this question when presenting some case-studies of developing countries to show that the emergence and the functioning of a given scientific community is strongly influenced by the society in which it takes shape.
Since then the concept of scientific community as defined above has been challenged (e.g. [22, 48]). Bourdieu [13] introduced the notion of the scientific field as a space where struggles for the monopoly of the scientific authority or credit take place. Bourdieu's model has been modified and further developed by Latour and Woolgar [55] among others. Others have gone beyond the credibility model to introduce the notion of networking [84] and translation [18]. While the latter studies have been useful to pinpoint the limits and the irrelevance of an internalist conception of the notion of scientific communities, no appropriate alternative concept has yet been proposed. Thus, it has been used in more recently published works [19, 31, 33, 64] and is still considered as a useful methodological tool in ongoing research programmes (e.g. [83]).
The widening gap and the need for a revised typology
Most of the studies reviewed at the beginning of this chapter tend to conclude that none of the developing countries has a genuine scientific community. Care must be taken, however, to avoid overgeneralizing. The last decade has made it increasingly clear that it was impossible to treat the developing countries as if they were a homogeneous entity. The gap is clearly widening between the "least-developed countries" and the "newly industrialized countries." The latter have reached a fair level of technological and scientific research, industrial capacity, and domestic sales that justifies their hope to better capitalize on new scientific development and technology [85], while most of the least-developed countries have unproductive, inadequate scientific research systems and lack an industrial base, qualified personnel, and capital.
Seven developing countries (Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina) account for almost 90 per cent of the total manufactured exports of the developing world, and the four in Asia account for 77 per cent. Although the development of endogenous scientific communities has not been the impetus for development in most of the Asian newly industrialized countries (in particular in Singapore and South Korea, where steady growth has been supported by acquiring techniques and transforming imported resources, together with staff training), these countries are now trying harder than ever to develop their national science and technology activities. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when most developing countries were generally devoting between 0.1 per cent and 0.4 per cent of their GNP to research, Korea, for example, was already spending over 1 per cent and is today spending close to 2 per cent. Singapore, which is lagging behind slightly - starting from an average level of spending characteristic of most developing countries in the late 1970s and early 1980s (between 0.2 per cent and 0.3 per cent) - is now spending more than 1 per cent and is planning to catch up with Korea and Taiwan before the end of the century [41]. A similar development might take place in the South-East Asian countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia during the coming decade, although their economies will no doubt remain more dependent on agriculture. The situation is clearly different for the remaining Latin American industrializing countries (Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina), which, unlike their four Asian counterparts, belong in the category of large countries.
The question of the large countries is more difficult because of the size of their scientific communities and because most of them can hardly be considered as single entities but rather as several countries in one. One should, however, distinguish here between the two giants (China and India) and the other countries (Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, etc.). India, which has been described as "excellence in the midst of poverty," has today among the five largest scientific communities in the world and accounts for 50 per cent of the scientific production of the developing countries. China, like India, also has a very high scientific and technological manpower potential in absolute terms due to its huge population, but low as a percentage of the total population. Both countries have vast regional disparities. The development of the scientific community in Brazil, the largest scientific community in Latin America, also illustrates the profound regional imbalance between the southern states (and more specifically the state of São Paulo), and the rest of the country. But large often goes together with fragile [77], and the economic difficulties recently experienced by most of these countries, plus the political events that arose in China, remind us that the future of their scientific communities is far from secure. They still have to struggle to create a space for science [75].
But let us remember that the majority of developing countries are small and very small countries. In 1985, about 67 per cent of all developing countries had a population of less than 10 million, and 52 per cent had less than 5 million. Botswana, Lesotho, Vanuatu, Swaziland, and Chad are typical examples. Although size measured in absolute terms is not an adequate indicator of the prospects of developing a science and technology base, it is more difficult to establish one in the smaller countries. Due to resource constraints, small developing - and developed - countries cannot solve all their problems alone. Major decisions have to be made as to what should be attempted using their limited research capabilities and what can be borrowed from elsewhere. This also requires adequate access to information and participation in research networks.
Thus, it is no longer possible to consider the developing countries as a single entity, and there is an obvious need to establish a typology reflecting the level of development in science and technology and the problems described above. An analysis of the different typologies available shows that the most common are linked to economic indicators, especially per capita GNP, and suggests a classification based on thresholds, e.g. the World Bank typology, which recognizes low income countries (US$0-US$400 per inhabitant per year), medium income countries (US$400-US$1,700), and oil-exporting, high income countries. The United Nations system, especially UNCTAD, makes a distinction between newly industrialized, oil-exporting, and least-developed countries.
But, as correctly stressed by Salomon and Lebeau [72], "purely economic definitions of developing countries tend to be distorting mirrors." Based on science and technology resources, they proposed a classification with five categories of developing countries. A recent report presented to Unesco by the International Council for Science Policy Studies [46] proposes an aggregate typology of "science and technology capabilities." Excluding the industrialized countries, three groups are identified: those with almost no science and technology base; those with fundamental elements of such a base; and those with an established science and technology base. Most African countries belong to the first group.
The latter classifications are the most interesting ones for our purpose, but a number of misgivings suggest that further research and efforts are needed to produce a more dynamic typology that takes account of recent set-backs and fluctuations. The main reason for the misgivings is the lack of reliable, comparable, and recent data on some of the basic indicators, including science and technology activities, in many developing countries. The adequacy of some of the science and technology indicators (in particular output indicators, which are controversial - even for industrialized countries) for measuring or evaluating third world science is also very much open to question (e.g. [5]).
Furthermore, many of the crucial factors that affect a society's ability to take advantage of modern science cannot be measured and translated into indicators. The search for a more "explicative" typology must extend beyond quantifiable indicators to include social structures, political systems, and national history. In order to go beyond the question of indicators, country case-studies are presented in the next section to pinpoint similarities and differences and to show that the conditions surrounding the emergence of given national scientific communities are producing different styles of science [83].