In 1680, Robert Boyle published the Second Part of his Continuation of New Experiments Physico-mechanical, Touching the Spring and Weight of the Air.… - Steven Shapin

Entrepreneurs are often driven by vision and they embody that vision for those who choose to join and follow them. I spend some time in my book observing entrepreneurs “pitching” their companies to venture capitalists, and I note how often venture capitalists view the personal characteristics of the entrepreneur as about the most certain feature of an investable project. Technologies may change; markets may change; but the energies, vision, and commitment of the entrepreneur can be as durable, and as pertinent, as anything else in the scene.

As I indicated, there is a very pronounced tendency to identify science with what’s done in academia—and especially in the great research universities. But the facts suggest otherwise. At least from early in the twentieth century, the majority of American scientists were employed not by institutions of higher education but by industry and government. And that remains true today. Yet much modern commentary, especially from academic social scientists, viewed industry as a problematic environment for science. I’m not at all sure that’s right. If we compare, so to speak, apples with apples, and look at the pure research done in industry and that done in academia, many of the most popular contrasts describe the situation rather poorly.

There is a crisis of for work in our field, as in many other academic disciplines. One of its causes is a pathological form of the professionalism that we so greatly value. “Hyperprofessionalism” is a disease whose symptoms include self‐referentiality, self‐absorption, and a narrowing of intellectual focus. This essay describes some features and consequences of hyperprofessionalism in the history of science and offers a modest suggestion for a possible cure.