“Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.”
― Robert A Heinlein
Universities were started and Chartered by the Holy Roman Empire, in 1088A.D., at the Universitat De Bologna, with a definite political purpose in mind. The Popes had fallen into the habit of using excommunication of the HRE as a political tool in disputes with the Church. Since many of their government’s clerks were churchmen, this meant that a ruler could find himself unable to talk to half his own government.
This tactic of getting universities to provide sufficiently literate graduates to be the vast majority of government clerks eventually worked. By 1500A.D. a ruler could be excommunicated, and not have it affect his rule much at all. The result was the Reformation.
This left universities with their major market being the State and its dependents, and the more clerks in the State, the greater the University grew. It is no surprise that the University would be manipulating science results in favor of the growth of the State. This, unfortunately, is where we find ourselves today.
What we need is a means to pass knowledge from one generation to the next, without the State being its primary benefactor and market for its services. This is evolving, … but slower than any person who would not be a dependent on and of the State would wish.
Faster, Please!
Tom, nailed it, once again.
Your post reminds me of a portion of Eisenhower’s Farewell Address that rarely get discussed compared to the portion about the Military Industrial Complex that immediately precedes it.
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
This left universities with their major market being the State and its dependents, and the more clerks in the State, the greater the University grew. It is no surprise that the University would be manipulating science results in favor of the growth of the State. This, unfortunately, is where we find ourselves today.
That was centuries ago. One could say the thing of businesses and corporations. The earliest forms were tools of the State (such as the palace economies of the late bronze age). They no longer are.
Rather the cause is far more recent with the huge increase in government spending on colleges in the US both as direct funding and as subsidized student loans. Why expect them to advocate for policies that would cut off their food supply?
“Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.”
― Robert A Heinlein
Universities were started and Chartered by the Holy Roman Empire, in 1088A.D., at the Universitat De Bologna, with a definite political purpose in mind. The Popes had fallen into the habit of using excommunication of the HRE as a political tool in disputes with the Church. Since many of their government’s clerks were churchmen, this meant that a ruler could find himself unable to talk to half his own government.
This tactic of getting universities to provide sufficiently literate graduates to be the vast majority of government clerks eventually worked. By 1500A.D. a ruler could be excommunicated, and not have it affect his rule much at all. The result was the Reformation.
This left universities with their major market being the State and its dependents, and the more clerks in the State, the greater the University grew. It is no surprise that the University would be manipulating science results in favor of the growth of the State. This, unfortunately, is where we find ourselves today.
What we need is a means to pass knowledge from one generation to the next, without the State being its primary benefactor and market for its services. This is evolving, … but slower than any person who would not be a dependent on and of the State would wish.
Faster, Please!
Tom, nailed it, once again.
Your post reminds me of a portion of Eisenhower’s Farewell Address that rarely get discussed compared to the portion about the Military Industrial Complex that immediately precedes it.
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
This left universities with their major market being the State and its dependents, and the more clerks in the State, the greater the University grew. It is no surprise that the University would be manipulating science results in favor of the growth of the State. This, unfortunately, is where we find ourselves today.
That was centuries ago. One could say the thing of businesses and corporations. The earliest forms were tools of the State (such as the palace economies of the late bronze age). They no longer are.
Rather the cause is far more recent with the huge increase in government spending on colleges in the US both as direct funding and as subsidized student loans. Why expect them to advocate for policies that would cut off their food supply?