Today's scientific development and technological inventions are different from those before the last century. Most of them come from the professional activities of scientists and engineers, which are directly related to their careers. I think this interest or motivation related to professional activities mainly comes from four aspects:
One is the interest of professional scientists. This is a kind of motivation, but this kind of interest is essentially different from the scientific interest of the so-called "folk scientists" now. Because there are about 20-30 so-called "folk scientists" I come into contact with every year, and their occupations are various, most of them are farmers. Apart from passion and enthusiasm, their cultural level is not high and their scientific background is poor. Contemporary scientific research is far ahead of their cognitive level, and it is almost impossible to rely on their so-called research to support science in the modern sense. It can be seen that scientists' scientific interests are closely related to their careers. If people want to study science and become their own interests, they must first become professional scientists, which is the premise. Otherwise, they may not get funds, peer recognition and social recognition, be marginalized, and it is difficult to continue their research work. Now we say that scientific and technological innovation should stimulate scientific interest, but it must be linked to the major, and the scientific utility after the major cannot be ignored, because the scientific interest in today's society has become professional.
The second is the expectation of society for the professional role of scientists. In China, scientists have a high status. As a result of our public scientific literacy survey, the social prestige of scientists always ranks first, which is higher than that of British and American surveys. Since the industrialized society, especially since the knowledge economy society, the whole world is full of expectations for scientists. Politicians are looking forward to the improvement of national competitiveness, enterprises are looking forward to the increase of corporate profits ... and they are all looking for the help of scientists, so scientists are facing various pressures, as well as role competition and status competition from within the profession. The competition among professional scientists comes from the peer recognition of scientists, which is also an important source of scientific interest and motivation. Therefore, I think scientific research is not entirely an interest, and there should be a professional expectation, which comes from external pressure, thrust and temptation. Since you want to be a scientist, your job has corresponding professional requirements for you.
The third is the social responsibility of scientists. As biological people and social people, scientists have conscience, and they bear social responsibilities. Scientific career is the high-level pursuit of scientists and the embodiment of self-realization. Scientists are a high-level group, and the pursuit of competitive spirit, sense of responsibility, sense of crisis, thirst for knowledge and desire for games is also a very important source of scientific interest and motivation.
Fourth, unlike the Middle Ages and the beginning of the last century, today's scientific profession is full of great interests. This is a feature of today's society including the world. The interest temptation of scientific profession is not only in China, but also in other countries in the world. South Korea's Hwang Woo-suk incident is the appearance under the temptation of professional pressure and interests. Today, scientists are faced with more temptations than before. Be an official, earn money and even power and money together. I saw a message that a university professor will retire in three months. He applied for the academician for the last time, but the academician retired immediately without evaluation. After the academician's evaluation, everything continues. His students calculated an account for him. If he is not appraised as an academician, his monthly pension is about 3,000 yuan, and he can get 720,000 yuan when he is 80 years old. He was named an academician, and the academician allowance of the school alone was 6.5438+0.2 million yuan a year, plus his salary. If you live to 80 years old, you will get at least 3 million more if you don't count other income. This is not only money, but also fame and the treatment of "deputy ministerial level" ... In the real society, scientists are faced with many such temptations, including power, money, foreign countries, domestic countries, governments and enterprises. Under this temptation, the identity and role of scientists often change, sometimes officials, sometimes experts, sometimes bosses and businessmen. It is not unique for experts to be officials, officials to study for degrees and evaluate titles, and scientists to be project bosses and project "contractors". Therefore, considering today's scientists, we can't study their scientific activities and scientists' personal behaviors according to the closed thinking mode and mindset.
Second, science is a social tool. In today's society, politicians, entrepreneurs and the public have high expectations of scientists, because science and technology have become an important tool to gain national interests and international status. A country's strength and prosperity are almost equal to science and technology, and many countries' key technological breakthroughs are marked with political symbols. Many technical standards are produced in the United States, including the core technology of CPU computers, and 80%-90% are controlled by the United States, so such scientific and technological things have become an important tool for the United States to gain its own interests and global hegemony. Similarly, for individuals, science and technology have become a very important tool to gain political status and personal interests. After mastering and controlling technology in your own hands, you can gain the initiative in many aspects, which is called the capital of personal success. As a modern citizen, it is difficult for him to survive without modern scientific and technological knowledge. Science and technology is also a very important tool for enterprises to gain profits. If the enterprise owns and controls the talents who master and develop key technologies and controls the patent rights, it can stand out from the fierce market competition and get rich profits. Science is still the ruling tool. Whether it is a country, a region or an individual, people with more scientific knowledge often have more right to speak than others, even the right to own and dominate wealth and allocate resources. The United States has the dominant scientific and technological capital, and of course it has the right to speak in many fields and around the world. In reality, especially in China, science is still a personnel tool. The combination of academic research evaluation and personnel evaluation makes academic research evaluation a converter for some scientists to gain power, status and money.
It can be seen that science and technology in today's world has become a very extensive tool value and multifunctional thing. Today's science can no longer be confined to the cognitive stage as it was before the Middle Ages, but is highly technical and vulgar, rather than something that is shelved and castles in the air. The more interesting phenomenon is that science is synonymous with "politics", "rationality" and "legitimacy". Many words are attributed to science, such as scientific decision-making, scientific production and scientific life ... It seems that without science, contemporary society will lose its color.
Third, science is a social system. Many scientific sociologists analyze the community of scientists, which has at least several roles: first, the role of research is knowledge production; Secondly, the role of teaching is mainly a kind of inheritance and training scientific heirs; The third is management, namely coordination and maintenance; There is also the role of the goalkeeper. Science students need a goalkeeper, which is the role of screening and evaluation. In addition, scientific sociologists have classified organizations with the same group of scientists. They are divided into two categories: one is the group of scientists, which is a high-yield group, such as universities and research institutes, and is the real interest subject; The other, in a sense, is ignored by China's scientific establishment, covered by government functions, and ignored by scientific organizations-scientists' groups, that is, science and technology associations, intangible colleges and so on. Scientific organizational system was gradually formed in some European countries, such as Italy, Britain and France, from17th century and18th century. As we know, the first university in the world was established in Italy in 1088, when science was not taught. The true modern society of science and technology was also established in the17th century. We are now more recognized as the representative of the British royal degree. Of course, the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh was established by royal charter in 1505, but it is not a scientific and technological society in the sense of modern science. The world's first sci-tech periodical, Philosophical Transactions, was born in 1665, the science and technology society-the Royal Society of England.