90 | David Kaiser on Science, Money, and Power

90 | David Kaiser on Science, Money, and Power

Science costs money. And for a brief, glorious period between the start of the Manhattan Project in 1939 and the cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider in 1993, physics was awash in it, largely sustained by the Cold War. Things are now different, as physics — and science more broadly — has entered a funding crunch. David Kaiser, who is both a working physicist and an historian of science, talks with me about the fraught relationship between scientists and their funding sources throughout history, from Galileo and his patrons to the current rise of private foundations. It's an interesting listen for anyone who wonders about the messy reality of how science gets done.

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David Kaiser received a Ph.D. in physics, and a separate Ph.D. in history of science, from Harvard University. He is currently Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science in MIT's Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Professor of Physics in MIT's Department of Physics, and also Associate Dean for Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) in MIT's Schwarzman College of Computing. He has been awarded the Davis Prize and Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society, was named a Mac Vicar Faculty Fellow for undergraduate teaching at MIT, and received the Perkins Award for excellence in mentoring graduate students. His book Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World is available April 3.


Jaksot(415)

345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

Behaving rationally involves facing up to conditions of uncertainty; we never navigate the world with perfect confidence. Sometimes we are uncertain about the way the world is, but we can also be unce...

23 Helmi 1h 34min

344 | Adam Gurri on Liberal Democracy and How to Fight For It

344 | Adam Gurri on Liberal Democracy and How to Fight For It

It's possible to look at the course of history over the past few centuries and discern a movement toward increasing democracy, freedom, and individual rights -- "liberalism," in the political-philosop...

16 Helmi 1h 21min

343 | Tom Griffiths on The Laws of Thought

343 | Tom Griffiths on The Laws of Thought

For all that human beings spend a lot of their time thinking, it's far from obvious what that process actually entails. Part of it amounts to classical logical reasoning. But an even bigger part invol...

9 Helmi 1h 19min

AMA | Feb 2026

AMA | Feb 2026

Welcome to the February 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Pa...

2 Helmi 3h 10min

342 | Rachell Powell on Evolutionary Convergence, Morality, and Mind

342 | Rachell Powell on Evolutionary Convergence, Morality, and Mind

Evolution with natural selection involves an intricate mix of the random and the driven. Mutations are essentially random, while selection pressures work to prefer certain outcomes over others. There ...

26 Tammi 1h 37min

341 | Stewart Brand on Maintenance as an Organizing Principle

341 | Stewart Brand on Maintenance as an Organizing Principle

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," wrote W.B. Yeats. I don't know about the centre, but the tendency of things to fall apart is pretty universal, ultimately due to the Second Law of Thermody...

19 Tammi 1h 12min

340 | Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on What Matters and Why It Matters

340 | Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on What Matters and Why It Matters

At any given moment, an uncountable number of events are happening, but only some of them matter to us. What does it mean for something to matter, and more importantly, what does it mean for us to mat...

12 Tammi 1h 18min

339 | Ned Block on Whether Consciousness Requires Biology

339 | Ned Block on Whether Consciousness Requires Biology

It's become increasingly clear that the Turing Test -- determining whether human interlocutors can tell whether a conversation is being carried out by a human or a machine -- is not a good way to thin...

5 Tammi 1h 11min

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