opencopy.org

- Bridgstock, Ch. 7 -

Key points

1. Political and policy decisions can have an enormous effect on scientific adoption and progress. Sometimes these political/policy decisions obstruct scientific progress; sometimes they advance it.
2. In recent times, the kind of political and policy decisions that have most affected scientific discovery and adoption are economic decisions. Sometimes governments like Germany and Japan kick-started scientific discovery by central investments. Sometimes governments, corporations and communities retard the adoption of new and better methods because they want to protect existing industries.
3. An example of a policy decision retarding scientific progress is the British alkali industry. The washing and bleaching of raw cotton and wool requires sodium carbonate or washing soda. This was difficult to make by older methods that included burning seaweed. A much better method was developed in France by Nicholas Leblanc in 1791 for turning salt into washing soda. It was not adopted in England until the 1820s because England was at war with France. In 1882, the technique was improved by the Belgian, Ernest Solvay. It was not adopted on a broad scale in Britain until 1920. English firms using the Leblanc method merged to improve economies of scale. British corporations entered into price fixing agreements with Solvay producers. The British made economies by not having to change their plants.
4. Similarly, in the area of technology, British factories were increasingly backward but maintained because capitalists could still make a profit without investing in modernizing their equipment. After World War II, Japan and Germany’s economies surged forward because all their old equipment had been destroyed and the new equipment was better.
5. By 1870, the first global economy was established. This meant that there was pressure on nations to adopt the science and technologies that would make them globally competitive. What we have seen ever since then the progressive adoption of new scientific processes and technological innovations by those who want to catch up with the more advanced nations. This development has moved from Great Britain, to the European mainland, to overseas territories, Asia and North and South America. It is moving still as developing nations look for ways to catch up, which they can never do without adopting new technology.
6. There are winners and losers in this process. Some former colonies and developing nations get locked into a staples trap where they focus most of their energies on producing raw materials that others will finish and sell as value added or that will feed those who produce those materials. Good examples are Australia and Canada, who were able to prosper because of their preferred colonial status with Great Britain or proximity to the United States. But as the world enters into a new global phase, these nations are falling behind.
7. In order for countries like Australia and Canada to prosper, they have to make greater investments into scientific Research and Development and technological innovation. It is not that Canada and Australia have been totally backward, but almost all of our science and technology supports the produce of staple goods or commodities that no longer find a high price on the world market. Developing nations are able to produce these raw materials at a cheaper cost than us and, unless we take advantage of our high level of education to invest in scientific and technological instruction, we will fall ever further behind.
8. Canada is very behind technologically, except in a couple of areas. As the advanced nations begin to leave heavy manufacturing behind in favour of new technologies like computers and communications technology, we find that we have not really even developed an autonomous manufacturing industry. Instead, we are a branch plant economy that supports countries like Japan and the United States.
9. In the case of Canada, John A. MacDonald’s National Policy gave our industry too much protection and made it very uncompetitive on a world scale. Thus, Canadian companies take out relatively few patents for scientific processes or technological inventions. In this case, government intervention in the economy in the form of protective tariffs made Canada technologically backward.
10. That does not mean that free market capitalism is the only way to have a scientifically progressive country. In fact, for countries that are behind and want to catch up, government intervention in the area of scientific and technological growth can have an enormous effect.
11. The classic case is the Japanese economic miracle that, in large part, was achieved by the central control of the economy by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. MITI made cheap loans available to high tech industries and provided all kinds of government support. MITI and the Japanese government have also been able to protect Japanese products at home while occasionally dumping them at low prices abroad.
12. Japanese success is often seen as the imitation of the technologies produced by other countries. While this may have been true shortly after the war; it certainly is not true today. Japan is a substantial investor in scientific R & D to produce new and better products. The Japanese automobile industry introduced high quality and sophistication to a product that was formerly dominated by the United States and, to a lesser extent, Germany.
13. Moreover, Japanese science and technological innovation was not only applied to manufacturing products but also processes. The Japanese literally re-invented assembly line production with Just in Time (JIT) manufacturing processes that have now been copied by other countries around the globe.
14. Japan is a small country but has a huge population that can consume its goods and provide capital for new investments (the Japanese are the best savers in the world). But other countries like Sweden, with less of a home market, also invest profitably in science and technology. For much of the twentieth century, Canadian pulp and paper mills were purchasing or copying equipment developed by the Swedes. And we all know about the success of Volvo car manufacturers that still set the global standard for safety.
15. The interactions of science and technology with the economy are complex and make the simplistic assumptions of classical economics - free competition ruled only by the market - seem rather naïve. At the very least, modern capitalism requires some financial assistance and strategic planning in the area of science and technology to come from government. Whereas in Canada during the nineteeth-century, government interference in the form of protective tariffs may have hindered technological development, it would be a serious mistake to think that a twentieth-century solution to Canada’s growing economic backwardness would be a total return to market forces.
16. The free marketplace works well in some ways but not in others. The increased dependence on science and technology in the economy makes the market a very imperfect mechanism for ensuring growth and progress. Capitalists tend to invest for short-term profits, whereas new scientific discoveries and technologies may take longer to implement.
17. [Add the primary document from Chapter 1 of Business History by John Dwyer here.]

The notes presented here are for the AK NATS 1760.06 “Science, Technology and Society” course offered in the Fall/Winter Semester of 2001/2002 by the Atkinson College of York University, Toronto, Canada and taught by John Dwyer. The lectures are based on the following texts:

1. Martin Bridgstock et al, Science, Technology and Society: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1998), ISBN 0-521-58735-2
2. Kevin Robbins and Frank Webster, Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual Life (New York, Routledge, 1999), ISBN 0-415-16115-0
3. Albert H. Teich, Technology and the Future (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2000), ISBN 0-312-01885-1

For more about John Dwyer, visit: http://www.sayitagain.com/ivorytower/