The Scientific World

I hadn't given much thought to the application of the PxP model in the realm of research and scientific/engineering invention. Then I ran across citations to Herbert Holloman, the inspiration for an ongoing symposium called "Engineering as Social Enterprise".

The challenges that arise in this nexus between the pure quest for knowledge, the marketplace in which technological innovations sell and the impact those goods and services have in the world, is striking. As engineers go about looking for new ways to engage the physical world, they are bound to uncover technologies with negative impact--even those that also have positive sides. The nuclear bomb/energy being the paradigmatic case.

How then, how to direct research, with all of its reliance on grants and underwriting from the corporate world, so that the core values embraced by the engineers, or their governing association, get honored?

Like so many of the issues that arise in the PxP evolution, this requires insight from multiple disciplines: economists, engineers, social scientists, environmentalists, anthropologists and perhaps even futurists must weigh in on the conversation.

In the meantime, the challenge of developing, refining and expressing the core values that would best forward science and the goals of both society and the individual enterprise is left to the competencies available; No doubt some of those are formidable. No doubt, some are less so.