Globalization of science and technology research & development

In the eloquent phraseology of Derek Price (1975), “Science since Babylon,” modern science and technology have their antecedents in the historical development of ideas from antiquity to the present times.  According to Joseph Needham (1990), scientific ideas from China flowed to Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution.  In his Atlas of the Islamic World, Francis Robinson (1984) suggests that the Moorish renaissance in Spain (8^th through 16^th centuries) lit the torch that led to the Renaissance and Reformation in Europe.  Following the Industrial Revolution and colonialism, a great divide separated Europe and America from rest of the world.  Scientific knowledge flowed unidirectionally for nearly 200 years from West to the East, from North to the South, until recently.  Contemporary science and technology developments are marked by multidirectional flows of knowledge and movement of scientific workers on a world scale.

Starting with weapons research and development during and after the Second World War, contemporary generation of scientific knowledge is truly global in character.  Some of the most visible evidence of multinational “big science” includes international space research, the Human Genome Project, AIDS and malaria research, and physics at CERN and the Hadron Collider. This paper will argue that the rising cost of research, cross-cultural movement of scientists and engineers, the power of Diasporas, and above all the forces of globalization, the global economy, and global competition for markets, materials, and manpower per se are propelling international cooperation of science and technology and are expected to so at all levels in the foreseeable future.   

References:

1. Needham, Joseph (1990). A selection from the writings of Joseph Needham. Lewes: Book Guild.

2. Price, Derek J. de Solla (1975). Science since Babylon. New Haven: Yale University Press.

3. Robinson, Francis (1984). Atlas of the Islamic world. Oxford, UK: Equinox.