Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
scientific or scholarly future must ask herself, “Do you in all conscience
believe that you can stand seeing mediocrity after mediocrity, year after
year, climb beyond you, without becoming embittered and without
coming to grief?”
21
Although, Weber remarked, enthusiastic young
people always answer that their “calling” for science will see them
through, Weber cautions that few actually make it without succumbing
to ressentiment or resignation.
Finally, not all were allowed to play the game of science. Although
Weber does not mention gender, even though his wife was an ardent
socialist-feminist, he does add that if the would-be scientist was “a Jew,
of course one says
lasciate ogni speranza
['abandon all hope'].”
22
This
equation of the gates of Wissenschaft with the gates of hell is, on reflec-
tion, a rather bizarre one. It should serve as a reminder to those who
pine for the good old days when science was pure. By this I do not mean
that the recent couplings of science and industry are unproblematic, only
that historically their separation contributed to a certain castelike recruit-
ment within Germany and beyond.
Internal Situation: Inward Calling for Science
Weber opens the section in his lecture on the “inward calling for science”
by continuing to specify the conditions under which science operates.
The essential feature of contemporary science is that it has entered an
irreversible “phase of specialization previously unknown, and that this
will forever remain the case.”
23
Science is not wisdom; science is spe-
cialized knowledge. A number of important consequences follow from
this situation. First, “scientific work is chained to the course of
progress.”
24
Any scientist knows that by definition, and in part due to
their own efforts, their work is fated to be outdated. Every scientific
achievement opens new questions. One might say that a successful sci-
entist can only hope that one's work will be productively and fruitfully
outmoded rather than merely forgotten. Second, the knowledge worker
must live with the realization that not only are specialized advances the
only ones possible but that even small accretions require massive dedi-
cation to produce. Dedication or enthusiasm alone, however, is not suf-
ficient to produce good science. Nor does hard work guarantee success.
As Weber puts it, “Ideas occur to us when they please, not when it pleases
