Serving the truth and innovative development
"Polit.<url>" publishes an article by our regular author, PhD, Professor of the Higher School of Economics Simon Kordonsky.
It is generally accepted that there is no other way for the country's development, other than innovative, and there cannot be. By default, the source of innovation is considered to be science and, above all, domestic academic science. However, I will try to show that this science can hardly become a source of innovative development if it retains the basic principles of its organization and functioning.
Speaking of "science", "innovation", "development", "raising the level of research", officials, members of the scientific community, entrepreneurs and academic scientists put fundamentally different meanings into these words. And when, for example, representatives of academic science, justifying the need to allocate additional resources, talk about its outstanding successes, they do not mean the achievements that the state and business need. Mutual misunderstanding gives rise to illusions, in particular about the possibility of ensuring innovative development using the supposedly huge hidden resources available to the domestic academic science and the scientific community [1].
Officials understand science as a set of self-governing (in the case of academies) budgetary organizations, the result of which should be some knowledge, innovations, inventions, technologies and products that can be included in the state turnover and serve to develop the national economy and neutralize internal and external threats. The fact that academic science practically does not create such innovations is reproached and encourages attempts by budget managers to modernize it. However, this science is "sharpened" for something completely different, and, as the Soviet experience shows, it can give the results necessary for the national economy only with a rigidly formulated and specific state order.
Entrepreneurs, based on foreign experience, for some time considered academic science a possible source of know-how, which - with a successful combination of circumstances – can make a profit on already known markets or even become the basis for the formation of fundamentally new markets. Life has taught them a lot, and illusions about the commercial prospects of the results of domestic science have remained except for very romantic businessmen. Now entrepreneurs, as a rule, believe that academic science has already passed the "point of no return" in terms of the validity of investments in it. However, it remains attractive for business as a fund holder and manager of colossal and uncapitalized land and other resources. And entrepreneurs are not so wrong.
The scientific community understands science as a way of obtaining knowledge and as an organizational and public presentation of the results of research conducted by its members. The scientific community measures the scientific process by the number of publications based on research results, and the status of a modern scientist is not formalized by scientific and academic degrees, titles and awards, as is customary in academic science, but by citation indices (in the broad sense of the word), that is, indicators of the use of the texts of this scientist by other scientists, as well as the level of commercial attractiveness of the results research.
The world scientific community has long institutionalized its relations with both the state and business, resulting in a variety of economic and social institutions that mediate the transition from scientific discoveries and developments to commercial products. At the same time, the domestic scientific community is still included in the global innovation processes only in a private way, since its commercial and technological emancipation is blocked by academic science whenever possible.
Serving the Truth as self-worthFor academic science, its existence is valuable in itself and does not need any external justification and proof of effectiveness, as well as connections with other state and public institutions, except, of course, resource supply links.
This science is designed to comprehend the truth and is the object of worship of real scientists to science as an instrument of comprehension of the truth. True scientists must serve the truth, and therefore science, and the very fact of service, with the correct performance of the appropriate rituals, guarantees the receipt of new knowledge.
Academies of Sciences act as institutes of reproduction of rites of service to science performed by priests of science – members of the Academy [2]. And this is the natural order of things for this science, which is not subject to doubt and change. Academic scientists perceive attempts to reform the ministry system as an attempt on the truth, on the sacred. Science should be worshipped, not tried to modernize it – first of all, because its value is historically based, that is, archaic. After all, there is no other way to the truth, from the point of view of academic scientists, and there cannot be.
From an academic point of view, new – true –knowledge arises during the performance of sacred scientific rites, such as experiment, scientific proof or modeling. It is more a miracle than the result of labor. Further, properly performed rituals alone are not enough to comprehend the truth. After all, the truth is given only to those who deserve it, namely, real scientists, who are not born, but become during numerous procedures of scientific initiation and overcoming worldly temptations. If knowledge is obtained in violation of rituals or by a person who has not passed the procedures of scientific initiation, then it is "not pure", profane, cannot be considered real knowledge and must be repeatedly tested for truth, if it deserves it. Otherwise it should be ignored.
The totality of real scientists, the basic scientific truths of bygone times, rituals and rituals, on the one hand, and ways of reproducing them, on the other, constitutes, from this point of view, true science. It is clear that innovations and in general technical applications of knowledge in this understanding of science are considered external to it and do not deserve the attention of real scientists – priests of science.
It can be said that academic science, in its understanding of the truth, remains in the standards of the 18th and 19th centuries and fundamentally does not take into account even those innovations that have become generally accepted as a result of philosophical understanding of its own achievements, such as relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Modern science has not been looking for the truth for a long time, leaving this good cause to philosophy. It captures scientific facts, builds empirical generalizations about the connection between facts, develops theories explaining the revealed connections and predicts the consequences of theories verified by facts.
The understanding of science as the pursuit of truth is embodied in the structure of modern Russian academies, in their normative documents and behavioral stereotypes of their members. For three hundred years of the existence of academic science, a huge number of sacred procedures and sacred texts have been developed, ensuring the success of the ministry with their authentic reproduction, according to real scientists. These are, first of all, the charter of the academy, the regulations for the selection of full members and corresponding members, documents fixing the status of scientific priests and their provision with the resources necessary for proper service. In addition, these are institutes of scientific socialization-initiations and forms of fixing the ranks of ordinary scientists (academic and scientific degrees and titles), systems of scientific councils, scientific awards and distinctions, written and unwritten methodology of science, legends and myths about "famous", "outstanding" and "brilliant" scientists and their discoveries, and much more.
The totality of the more or less documented sacred foundations is complemented by a corpus of texts that are not subject to criticism, containing basic theories. From the point of view of academic science, the foundations of the structure of the world have already been described by the founding fathers, who are assigned the status of scientific high priests. The basic dogmas of academic science, such as theories of the structure of matter, the origin of existence or its evolution, are the basis of the "scientific worldview", and their profession is mandatory for members of academies. Doubt about the fundamental principles leads, ultimately, to some form of excommunication of doubters from thus organized science.
Service to science, from the point of view of academic science, is self-valuable and should be provided and serviced by all other state and public institutions. If we proceed from this logic, then the state and business should provide resources for the very fact of serving science, that is, ultimately, the performance of scientific rituals. And ordinary scientists should be content with being admitted to the temple of science (where members of the academy serve it), and with the hope that, if they follow the canons, they themselves will be able to become priests of science. And until that time, they should be glad that their modest gifts – scientific results – will be accepted (after checking for compliance with the canons) by the priests-members of the academy and placed – by the hands of the priests and on their behalf – on the altar of science.
Indeed, from this point of view, scientific results are a side effect of properly organized service to science and cannot be an end in itself. They – the results – arise if the ceremonial, sacred side of the service is observed and cannot belong to a simple scientist who has not yet been fully initiated into the mystery of truth comprehension. Rather, the authorship belongs to the priest of science – the scientific leader, who worshiped her fervently, feeding the scientific flock and thereby contributing to the "team of authors" scientific grace descended.
In this science, there are lists of real scientists, saints of science, that is, those members of the academy who most fervently worshipped her and therefore are listed in the annals. Portraits-icons of such priests adorn the offices of the heads of the academy, institutes and laboratories. The Holy Fathers of science are worshiped by academic scientists and are necessarily commemorated in scientific saints – lists of used literature accompanying any publication in an academic publication. Their names are assigned to the divisions of the academy, and the prizes of their name are awarded to the most outstanding priests of science and ordinary scientists who have proved their devotion to science by the correct performance of appropriate rites and rituals.
It is precisely this internal organization of academic science – through the service of a peculiarly understood truth – that has allowed it to survive several political regimes with one cost or another for almost 300 years of its existence.
Estate organization of service to scienceFrom a sociological point of view, so organized service to science forms a kind of corporation, the internal structure of which is formed by relations between scientific estates, each of which is assigned a very specific role in providing service, or in its maintenance.
The rules of initiation, that is, the transition from class to class, are rigidly codified and form the basis of internal academic life. The election to the academy, that is, the nomination to the estate, is the main event in this science.
The highest stratum in the estate structure of academic science is formed by full members of the Academy. This stratum, in turn, is rigidly hierarchical: there are ordinary academicians, and there are members of the presidium of the Academy, whose service to science is provided by a huge number of scientific servants. In addition, there is in one way or another a clear stratification of the sciences themselves and, accordingly, scientists according to the degree of scientific knowledge. The further science is from the despicable worldly reality, the truer it is. Therefore, pure mathematics is considered the main of the sciences, and some materials science or instrumentation are implicitly considered peripheral, burdened with applications.
At a lower level there is a stratum of corresponding members of the Academy, which is divided into subgroups with different levels of privileges depending on the symbolic proximity to the main temple - the presidium of the Academy and membership in the academy department. The ministry of mathematics in the "glass" is the most prestigious, while the ministry of philosophy in the Far East is relatively insignificant.
The principles of formation of the highest levels of the estate structure of a scientific corporation suggest that any person who has demonstrated his effective service to science can become a full member or corresponding member. So, a "science organizer" who has one scientific publication with co-authors, and an official who turned a blind eye to the "errors in the documents" of the academy during the next check of godlessly confused budget or property reports, and an adventurer entrepreneur who decided to add the title of corresponding member to the resources that he needs, can apply for membership in the corporation. it was possible to grab during the privatization of previously public property.
An even lower level of the academic hierarchy is formed by simple doctors and candidates of sciences, who ensure the process of service of members of the academy. And at the lowest level within the scientific hierarchy are those who do not serve science, but serve the ministry: engineers and technicians, laboratory assistants and other technical personnel.
Within the Academy there is a special informal institute of scientific inquisition, the purpose of which is to combat pseudoscience, that is, to worship non-canonized researchers who are seen as competitors in the struggle for resources provided by the state. Academic science also reacts very negatively to pop scientists, that is, scientists who are engaged in popularizing scientific dogmas and trying to educate laymen.
The impossibility of modernizing science as an institution of service to the truthFor the smooth functioning of the corporation, a flow of resources is necessary.
This flow has been provided by the state for centuries. However, in response, the modern state expects some results from science, thereby causing discontent among fans of comprehension of the truth. The absence of such is perceived by the state, in particular, as an ineffective ministry of the priests of science. The state has repeatedly tried to modernize the corporation of scientists and reorganize the institutions of service, demanding "usefulness for the national economy" from academic science. However, such a requirement fundamentally contradicts the ideology of selfless scientific service. Moreover, some mundanity of ordinary scientists (whose purpose, according to academics, is to provide service to science), their desire to technologize knowledge and to enter the market is considered by corporate academic morality as a kind of schism and is negatively sanctioned.
The possibilities of the state's influence on such a corporation are very limited, since when trying to verify the effectiveness of the use of property or assess the expediency of spending resources externally, it begins to defend itself as a whole, up to street processions of scientists with slogans such as "hands off science". The Academy believes that, in principle, there can be no external ways to evaluate its activities and reacts very aggressively to attempts to find and apply such methods.
Academic science also builds relations with business in a rather peculiar way. Members of the academy perceive the attempts of business to build "connections with science" and get something from science that can make money as a form of worship of the "ignoramus".[3] They expect gifts from entrepreneurs on its altar, squeamishly wincing in response to timid expectations of commercialized research results.
Academic science has a purely consumer attitude to the world around it. In their opinion, all public, state and economic institutions should be grateful to the priests of science, since only through their prayers "these semi-literate" escaped many dangers and got at their disposal a bunch of useful things like computers, lasers, polymers and antibiotics, side effects of the ministry. The form of expression of gratitude should, apparently, be gifts in the form of signs of attention and respect, supported, of course, by purely material substances, provided by fans of science to its priests for laying on its altar.
Service to science and the scientific community Academic science has not at all trivial relations with the scientific community, whose members, if they worship science, then with the humor inherent in this environment, if not cynicism.
The spirit of scientific search and entrepreneurship reigns in this environment, which is fundamentally alien to academic science. Scientists formulate their research tasks, look for resources to solve them, and report on their work with scientific publications. In the course of research, effects are identified and devices are designed, which, if lucky, the works of designers and technologists eventually turn into goods, sometimes entering global markets or even forming these markets.
The purely rational nature of this community, the lack of authority and disregard for rituals is perceived by academic science as a kind of barbarism and greed, which must be eradicated, and the barbarians themselves are converted into a true "pure" science that has no secular applications.
The scientific community and academic science are forced to coexist in the same social space, since, according to the totality of circumstances, practicing scientists work in institutes and laboratories, most often belonging to academies, their devices and equipment were purchased or created at the expense of budget funding of academies, and scientific and infrastructural communications are on the balance of organizations headed by members of academies.
There has long been a kind of symbiosis between the scientific community and academic science, in which the scientific community shares the results of its research with academic science, providing members of academies with the opportunity to lay these results on the altar of science. In addition, they "unbind" the management of their organizations from grants and budgets, "help" defend dissertations to "the right people" and perform many other functions, providing and serving the service of science. And the members of the academy, if possible, turn a blind eye to a departure from the principles of pure service to the truth, to attempts to technologize research and search for opportunities for market application of the results of scientific research.
At the same time, academic scientists vigilantly control scientific communications, creating barriers both to the publication of scientific results not signed by "famous" and "outstanding" scientists, and restricting the access of ordinary researchers to world scientific information networks, considering, probably, that communications not mediated by the priests of science are alien to true service.
In such a system of relations, working scientists are forced to lock themselves in narrow collectives, forming a well-known type of highly qualified scientist-craftsman, generally helpless both outside academic hierarchies and in the market. Such scientists are able, at best, to form a local market for the "piece" results of their research, but they cannot bring them to the level of technology, since the institutional environment surrounding them, to put it mildly, does not contribute to this. Therefore, working scientists tend to emigrate in one form or another, either directly or indirectly: by joining foreign research teams, being published in foreign scientific journals and receiving foreign grants for research.
The balance in the relationship between serving science and research itself is not constant and depends largely on the political conjuncture. In the Russian Empire, service to science was somehow more or less organically combined with membership in the scientific community, although even A. S. Pushkin wrote, hinting at behavioral anomalies specific to closed corporations, about Academician Dondukov about the same as members of the modern scientific community write about some members of the academy [4]. In Stalin's times, service was more an internal end in itself of academic science, and a very significant part of the resources went to the scientific community itself, which solved specific tasks set by the "party and the government" – under threat of applying, in case of non-compliance with the decisions of the party, certain penalties.
In stagnant times, the service to science began to dominate – to the detriment of research itself, and academic science, having grown to fantastic proportions on state resources, sharply lost the qualifications of researchers, which was repeatedly recorded in numerous open and closed resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
The party and the government began to develop branch science largely because the desire of academics for the truth did not contribute, to put it mildly, to the development of equipment and technologies necessary for a planned economy. A significant part of strategically important scientific results and "products" based on them were created at that time already in state scientific centers, such as various "mailboxes" and research institutes, where scientists simply served, and not in institutions and organizations of academic science, where venerable scientists served science.
It should be noted, however, that the very system of modern scientific organizations in post-perestroika times was preserved largely because academic scientists continued to serve science despite the meager resources allocated by the state. Although, on the other hand, it was President Boris Yeltsin who signed a decree transferring a significant part of the academy's property to its balance sheet, which was not the case with any other Russian social structure. However, if academic science took advantage of this boon, it was more likely to get easy money from renting out premises than for the development of research.
Having survived in dashing times, the institutes of academic science have largely lost the remnants of their scientific certainty in terms of obtaining new knowledge, compensating for this with hypertrophied service. It can be said that now academic scientists enthusiastically serve science on budgetary resources, and branch science, with the exception of a very small number of state scientific centers, is languishing. The system of branch and state research institutes, which was strong in applied Soviet science, in these times degraded much more than academic science.
Today, the state has formed a request in relation to science, but the balance between service and the application of knowledge has already – perhaps irreversibly – shifted in favor of service. The scientific community is put in conditions where there is nothing to do with research, since most of the resources are mastered in the service of science.
The scientific community, squeezed between academic science and a very tough reality in economic and social terms, behaves differently. Some scientists emigrated or formed specific communities separated in space-time: life in Russia, work abroad. The other part is self-isolated and reproduced in narrow collectives, being published in journals that are read only by their authors and editors. The decline is manifested both in the absolute and relative decrease in the number of scientific publications, in scientific emigration, and in the transformation of the domestic scientific community into a scientific periphery, accompanied by the fragmentation of teams of scientists and the loss of scientific communications between them.
The achievements of members of the domestic scientific community are difficult to commercialize due to the initial lack of focus on the market and due to the fact that the country lacks technological and economic infrastructure that would allow bringing unique products and effects to the level of consumer goods. And most of all, because of the specific worldview of the ministry, which even quite sober members of the scientific community profess.
This ideology, which is willy-nilly reproduced even by quite productive scientists, is completely incomprehensible to entrepreneurs and officials who do not consider it possible to pay for "beautiful results and effects" if they are reproduced only in laboratory conditions. Therefore, the current scientific community is very limited in the possibilities of contacts with business and industry, including due to complete mutual misunderstanding. Members of the scientific community, from the point of view of entrepreneurs, are left-handed craftsmen who create unique products that cannot be turned into goods and services.
Everyone suffers from a shift in the balance between academic science and the scientific community: the state, the scientific community, business, and, ultimately, academic science itself, since the quality of those who provide and serve it is catastrophically deteriorating. This is also realized by the priests of science themselves, who blame the education system, the state and society for this, but not themselves.
The situation is paradoxical: in our country, if we proceed from the self-determination of academic science, the best science in the world, since nowhere else does it already serve such volumes at public expense. On the other hand, domestic science is in a deep depression, which is directly evident not only from the citation rates of domestic scientists and emigration of researchers, but also in the workshops of factories and in stores where there are simply no domestic innovative products.
Service to truth and social stratificationAcademic science has taken root in our social structure in various ways.
In particular, through the institute of awarding academic and scientific degrees and titles. The social homogeneity of Soviet society, in particular, was overcome by obtaining a PhD degree, which also gave a significant salary increase and the right to additional living space at that time. The possession of a candidate's degree or a doctor of sciences distinguished a citizen of the USSR from a host of his kind and was, like everything else, a deficit that was "taken out". Since the control over the system of awarding degrees and titles was carried out by representatives of academic science, they very conveniently found themselves in the role of a deficit distributor, which gave many opportunities undocumented by Soviet law.
During the restructuring and subsequent destruction of the social structure of Soviet society, the possession of a scientific and academic degree and title remained one of the few symbols of former belonging to what was considered the elite of socialist society, although the main benefits to candidates and doctors of sciences sharply lost in value.
But after a very short time, this archaic was in demand by representatives of the new post-Soviet elite as a way to nominally fix their position in the emerging social structure of post-Soviet Russia. Scientific and academic degrees and titles have become a commodity in high demand in a new market that emerged almost instantly. Naturally, the demand was met by the priests of science, and the newly-born seekers of scientific truth found various ways to pay off the managers of status resources, including the support of academic science in solving its resource problems. As a result, the number of candidates and doctors of economics, law, sociology, cultural studies, philosophy, political science, etc. of the so-called social sciences has increased to some obscene values.
Eventually, scientists and scientific degrees and titles were largely devalued and became a commodity of mass consumption. But there is a demand for academic titles, which the academy is trying to satisfy, observing some decency and motivating by the fact that it is necessary for the preservation of science.
Thanks to the Institute of scientific and academic degrees and titles, which academic science largely controls, domestic academies are built into a very powerful system of fixing social statuses. Belonging to the academic class gives at least the illusion of social certainty in our anomalous socio-state structure, fixes belonging to a seemingly non-marginal social group. Satisfying the need for social certainty, academic science has become an integral part of modern social relations and uses this in its attempts to completely monopolize the allocation of budgetary resources for conducting all kinds of research, that is, for the search for a kind of understood truth.
Serving the Truth and Serving God: from Antagonism to Mutual Understanding The priests of science fully understand some unnaturalness and piquancy of the current situation and, in search of justification for its naturalness, turned their attention to a largely similar institution of ministry – the church, which, unlike science, is not directly funded by the state.
The history of relations between the institutes of academic science and faith in our country is very contradictory. In Soviet times, faith in science was the official state religion and was rigidly opposed to faith in God as a reactionary archaic. Atheism was a scientific specialty. Actually, the USSR Academy of Sciences, the successor of the Imperial Academy, has grown, among other things, because it has largely turned into an ideological institute designed to form a scientific worldview (as an alternative to a religious worldview) and as a manufacturer of weapons for a comprehensive ideological struggle against capitalist aggressors.
The now half-forgotten society "Knowledge" has always been headed by titled priests of science, and lecturing on any topic in the most remote and romantic provinces of the state on the vouchers of this society was a decent help to the salaries of itinerant preachers of science, especially Soviet academic social scientists who traveled with lectures "on the international and domestic situation."
The USSR Academy of Sciences performed this ideological function quite effectively, while the "manufacture of products" and the development of technologies, as mentioned earlier, were largely militarized by state and industry research institutes. The fact that their leaders, chief designers and specialists acted – in public – as academic scientists did not mean that they belonged to the priests of science.
With the collapse of the USSR and the rehabilitation of religion as a public institution, academic science and religion began to coexist in the same social space of the formation and translation of the worldview. Moreover, academic science is clearly losing out to religion in this part. The religious (and mystical) worldview competing with it pushes the scientific picture of the world broadcast by academic science, which for some time stimulated the attacks of the priests of science on religion.
The scientific community, unlike academic science, in principle has no conflicts with religion, as it does not pretend to participate in the formation of a worldview. There are well-known examples of both religious scientists and ministers of worship who have become outstanding representatives of the scientific community. However, academic science and religious institutions have clearly competed for many years in the field of worldview formation. Moreover, academic science has largely borrowed from the church the principles of its internal organization and the very ideology of service.
Today, academic science and religion are in many ways in an unequal position. The service to science is recognized by the state, academic scientists are decorated in the form of a special estate that receives resources from the federal budget. At the same time, these scientists are not forbidden to accept offerings in the form of grants, fees and kickbacks for renting the premises of the temples of science. On the contrary, serving God is not now considered a public service and is not funded from the budget. Formally, churches exist on donations of various kinds, and clergymen live, like all other persons of liberal professions, only on fees. The situation is far from social justice, and in order to achieve it, it is necessary either to stop considering the service of science as a state matter and stop financing it from the budget, or to recognize the service of God as titular and begin its budget financing.
Academic science and the church are very similar in their claims that society and the state should ensure, first of all, the very fact of serving God or the truth, based on its self-worth. Today's convergence of academic science and the church in the field of claims to form a picture of the world shows, from my point of view, that these seemingly irreconcilable opponents unite in their demands to the state and society to provide and serve the services of science and God regardless of their utilitarian worldly consequences. Academic science wants in some form to constitute the self-worth of service and its right to be far from mundane applications, such as innovative development.
It is obvious that the relationship between the state and academic science is their internal affair. If the state believes that the service to science, organized in the way described above, satisfies certain state needs, then so be it. And if the process of integrating academic science and the church into a functionally unified ideological institution is necessary from the point of view of forming a state ideology, then it means it is necessary.
Scientific community and innovative developmentIn addition to the formation of the state ideology, there are other state tasks, in particular, as already emphasized, scientific support and maintenance of innovative development.
You can repeat the theses about the greatness of Russian science as much as you like, but this will no longer cause innovative products of domestic production to appear on the markets. Serving science in no way even allows us to approach the tasks of innovative development. If the state is guided by an innovative way of development, then there is no other source of innovation other than the domestic scientific community, unless, of course, they become completely dependent on imports in terms of ideas, concepts and technologies. It is obvious that in order to solve the problems of innovative development, it is necessary to build relations between the state, business and the scientific community and distance oneself from academic science with its service to the truth.
Obviously, direct contacts between the state and the scientific community, not mediated by academic science, are necessary. However, this is not possible now, since the tasks of innovative development are formulated at the federal level, where only academic science, incompatible with innovative processes, communicates with the authorities. The scientific community, paradoxically, now has practically no other institutionalizations other than academic. Even technical societies, highly developed under the Soviet regime, are now eking out, mostly, a miserable existence. And the Moscow Society of Nature Testers, once no less significant than the Imperial Academy, has completely disappeared from the scientific space.
The scientific community, with the exception of federal cities, exists mostly at the municipal level, and to a lesser extent at the regional level, where state intentions reach with great difficulty. And the problems of the members of this community, apart from institutional ones, are much more connected with municipalities than with federal institutions. These are most often the problems of renting premises, providing land plots, creating technical and information infrastructure, and other mundane things. And without the direct interest of municipal authorities in the success of innovative initiatives, almost any business is doomed, even if the federal authorities form a body of regulations that stimulate innovators. As experience shows, local officials have an adequate neutralizing response to every good intention of the federal authorities. It is obvious that it is necessary to interest the municipal authorities in stimulating the development of scientific and applied research focused on commercial output.
The existing experience of creating science cities and technoparks turns out to be unproductive so far, primarily because these federal organizational innovations remain alien (with a few exceptions) to the municipalities on whose territory they are located. Municipalities that are not included in the innovation economy proper tend to build relations with them in such a way as to maximize the rent from the status of a science city or a technopark, without being particularly concerned about promoting research and development. Local scientific communities will not be able to be included in innovation processes until innovative development is actually usurped by the federation.
It is necessary to delegate innovative functions from the federal to the municipal level of government in some form and to back them up with special federal grants and preferences. Naturally, at the same time, municipal authorities should be interested in income from innovations, scientific developments and other products of the scientific community. Scientific and near-scientific business, it seems, should become both a source of income for municipal budgets and a source of personal income for municipal officials.
In such a configuration, it is theoretically quite possible to find a way out of the innovation impasse and solve the tasks of innovative development formulated in the regulatory documents of the authorities. Academic science can remain a service to science provided by the federal authorities, and research teams mutually supported by regions and municipalities will be able to function productively, creating the scientific foundations necessary for the transition of the economy from an inertial to an innovative stage.
A special task, it seems, is the resocialization of members of the scientific community, who, according to their psychology, largely remain craftsmen-artisans and shop workers. Due to the peculiarities of their ideas about science, about the state and society, about the government and its relations with science, they cannot enter into productive relations with the state and respond to its calls for innovative development. Maybe it is at the municipal level that it will be necessary to form special "cocoons" in which our brilliant scientists and artisans will be able to bring their ideas and developments to the stage when technologists and entrepreneurs will be able to start bringing them to the markets.
Another equally important task is the formation of scientific communications that are not mediated by academic science. It is necessary to create an alternative scientific information environment, the elements of which can be new scientific journals supported by the state and municipalities, as well as special communication institutes based on modern network principles. One domestic citation index, which is now being formed by the most active members of the scientific community with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science, will clearly not be enough, since the degree of control of the priests of science over the information space of science is prohibitively large.
In addition, demonopolization of the system of awarding academic degrees and titles is desirable. Academic science now, exercising control over the activities of academic councils through its members, largely determines this process, which has turned into a farce in certain areas of knowledge. The scientific community, if the assignment of scientific degrees becomes its inalienable and uncontrolled function, will find an opportunity to give this archaic institution more proper scientific meaning and separate it from the search for social certainty by many dashing and ambitious citizens of our state.
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The exemplary organized worship of science and the pursuit of truth allowed academic science to survive the empire, the Soviet government, the democratic freedom of the Yeltsin times, adding to itself a little under all political regimes. It is obvious that she is quite comfortable in today's Russia. Only innovations, as always, are a problem. They mostly have to be borrowed from those countries where the worship of science has not gone so far. And "implement", overcoming the resistance of the established scientific way – unlike other social systems in which the innovation-based economy has created a completely different science. It remains to be consoled by the fact that a significant part of the scientific ideas underlying modern technologies, as it is believed, were formulated by domestic scientists who failed, thanks to an exaggerated desire for non-existent truth, including to bring them to marketable form.
An abridged version of the text is published in the appendix to the Nezavisimaya Gazeta – NG-Nauka[1]
Academic science is represented by a hierarchy of members of academies, while the scientific community is a collection of productive scientists. Members of the scientific community may or may not be members of academies. And the opposite is true, members of academies may or may not be members of the scientific community.
[2] The terms "priests of science", "altar of science", "service to science", "comprehension of truth", etc. are used by academic scientists for self-description.
[3] "Ignorant" and "semi–literate" are terms used by some members of the academy in public speeches.
[4] "At the Academy of Sciences
Prince Dunduk is sitting.
They say it's not appropriate
It's such an honor for Dunduk;
Why is he sitting?
Because <----> there is."
Pushkin A.S. PSS. 1937-1959. Volume 3. p. 338
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