Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas30 Mar 2020

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.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(427)

305 | Lilliana Mason on Polarization and Political Psychology

Political outcomes would be relatively simple to predict and understand if only people were well-informed, entirely rational, and perfectly self-interested. Alas, real human beings are messy, emotiona...

17 Feb 20251h 17min

Bonus | Cuts to Science Funding and Why They Matter

The Trump administration, led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, has proposed sweeping cuts to spending on science research here in the US, in particular at the National Institu...

12 Feb 20251h 10min

304 | James Evans on Innovation, Consolidation, and the Science of Science

It is a feature of many human activities - sports, cooking, music, interpersonal relations - that being able to do them well doesn't necessarily mean you can accurately describe how to do them well. S...

10 Feb 20251h 16min

AMA | February 2025

Welcome to the February 2025 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...

3 Feb 20253h 44min

303 | James P. Allison on Fighting Cancer with the Immune System

A typical human lifespan is approximately three billion heartbeats in duration. Lasting that long requires not only intrinsic stability, but an impressive capacity for self-repair. Nevertheless, thing...

27 Jan 20251h 7min

302 | Chris Kempes on the Biophysics of Evolution

Randomness plays an important role in the evolution of life (as my evil twin will tell you). But random doesn't mean arbitrary. Biological organisms are physical objects, after all, and subject to the...

20 Jan 20251h 30min

301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

Big data is ruling, or at least deeply infiltrating, all of modern existence. Unprecedented capacity for collecting and analyzing large amounts of data have given us a new generation of artificial int...

13 Jan 20251h 9min

300 | Solo: Does Time Exist?

A new year, and a new centennial -- 300 (regularly-numbered) episodes of Mindscape! Our tradition is to have a solo episode, and what better topic than the nature of time? Physicists and philosophers ...

6 Jan 20252h 11min