Around the globe and across a range of disciplines, military patronage transformed science and technology in the Cold War. Scientists had to adapt to a regime of knowledge production that was far more project-oriented, team-based, bureaucratized and subject to the restrictions of national security than it had been before. But along with adaptation came substantial opportunities. Scientists created spaces for what they wanted to do, including fundamental research, within the limits imposed on them by their funding agencies and administrators. In both autocratic and democratic states, the exper ... More

Around the globe and across a range of disciplines, military patronage transformed science and technology in the Cold War. Scientists had to adapt to a regime of knowledge production that was far more project-oriented, team-based, bureaucratized and subject to the restrictions of national security than it had been before. But along with adaptation came substantial opportunities. Scientists created spaces for what they wanted to do, including fundamental research, within the limits imposed on them by their funding agencies and administrators. In both autocratic and democratic states, the experimental techniques and technologies that were made available by state funding were mobile enough to satisfy both the aspirations of the inquiring mind and the military patron. Scientists and engineers—as well as philosophers of science—actively engaged in creating a space for free inquiry as they simultaneously grappled with their dependence on external patrons with specific goals tied to national security, national identity, and economic development. By bringing together papers that deal with postwar science in very different countries and political systems, this collection emphasizes that the Cold War as analytical category must itself be interrogated: none of its ‘defining characteristics’ as regards the practice of science and technology should be reified, and none were invariable over time and geographical space during the latter half of the twentieth century.