Beyond the Reach of Regulation? "Basic" and "Applied" Research in the Early Cold War United States

Abstract

This article describes the place of the basic/applied science distinction in negotiations over the limits of secrecy between the U.S. "scientific" community and the American government. It combines an analysis of Vannevar Bush's key report to the President in 1945 with Congressional hearings in the late 1950s that were concerned about the increasingly vast scope of government controls over the circulation of knowledge. The concept of "basic research" was used as a political weapon to push back against the extended, uncoordinated, and frustrating constraints on the circulation of new research findings by the expanding apparatus of the National Security State. Mapping basic vs. applied research onto open vs. regulated and classified knowledge served as key to a workable political compromise between the scientific and national security communities.

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