Changing Incentives and the Closing of the Scientific Mind

I argue that a variety of fundamental changes in the structure of the scientific enterprise since the time of the Scientific Revolution have each served to make that enterprise systematically more conservative in the research that it pursues.  As science itself has evolved from the activities of gentlemanly amateurs in the earliest scientific societies to those of the professionalized scientific communities and research universities of the 19^th Century to contemporary state-sponsored academic science, the social, political, and institutional organization of scientific activity has consistently reduced the incentives offered to scientists for pursing theoretical innovation while expanding the incentives for conducting something like what Thomas Kuhn called “Normal Science” instead.  Perhaps most importantly, I suggest, the shift to a system of competitive funding for specific projects awarded by peer review instituted following WWII has dramatically restricted not only the incentives but also the freedom available to scientists to pursue genuinely novel, creative, or transformative theoretical approaches.  I conclude by considering potential systematic advantages and disadvantages of diversifying or at least exploring alternatives to the ways in which we presently support and incentivize scientific research.