New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, the Siberian City of Science - Rilegato

Josephson, Paul R.

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0691044546 ISBN 13: 9780691044545

Casa editrice: Princeton Univ Pr, 1997

Riassunto

In 1958 construction began on Akademgorodok, a scientific utopian community modeled after Francis Bacon's vision of a "New Atlantis." The city, carved out of a Siberian forest 2,500 miles east of Moscow, was formed by Soviet scientists with Khrushchev's full support. They believed that their rational science, liberated from ideological and economic constraints, would help their country surpass the West in all fields. In a lively history of this city, a symbol of de-Stalinization, Paul Josephson offers the most complete analysis available of the reasons behind the successes and failures of Soviet science--from advances in nuclear physics to politically induced setbacks in research on recombinant DNA.Josephson presents case studies of high energy physics, genetics, computer science, environmentalism, and social sciences. He reveals that persistent ideological interference by the Communist Party, financial uncertainties, and pressures to do big science endemic in the USSR contributed to the failure of Akademgorodok to live up to its promise. Still, a kind of openness reigned that presaged the glasnost of Gorbachev's administration decades later. The openness was rooted in the geographical and psychological distance from Moscow and in the informal culture of exchange intended to foster the creative impulse. Akademgorodok is still an important research center, having exposed physics, biology, sociology, economics, and computer science to new investigations, distinct in pace and scope from those performed elsewhere in the Soviet scientific establishment.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

Winner of the 1998 Marshall Shulman Book Prize, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies
"[In this] admirably brave new book, Paul Josephson sets out to write the history of this social experiment [two dozen academic research institutes built in Siberia in 1957] . . . To this research, he adds his insights into Soviet academic and engineering cultures, environmental problems, innovation, and development. The book deserves high praise for providing a wealth of information and for initiation the consideration of this virtually unexplored history."--Science

Contenuti:

	Acknowledgments
	Note on Transliteration
	Introduction
Ch. 1	From Moscow, Leningrad, and Ukraine to the Golden Valley	3
Ch. 2	Colliding Beams and Open Traps	43
Ch. 3	Siberia - Land of Eternally Green Tomatoes	82
Ch. 4	Machines Can Think, but Can Humans?	120
Ch. 5	Siberian Scientists and the Engineers of Nature	163
Ch. 6	The Siberian Algorithm	204
Ch. 7	Crackdown: The Communist Party and Academic Freedom in Akademgorodok	263
	Epilogue	305
	Notes	311
	Index	343

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Princeton Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0691044546
• ISBN 13: 9780691044545
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 351