PART II
TECHNICAL CHANGE:
ITS NATURE AND IMPACT 4
Science, Technical Change
and Development*
INTRODUCTION
The view adopted by policy makers in many third
world countries, including Pakistan, is that a greater
expenditure on science research will lead to technical change
and thereby stimulate economic development. Such an
approach arises out of an inadequate understanding of the
relationship between science, technical change and the
production system. re will suggest in this paper that the
application of modern science research to technology requires,
apart from other situational changes, the establishment of
machine producing industries. Only then can science research
be translated into the design and manufacture of continuously
improved machines. This essential prerequisite for the
indigenous application of science research to technology is
precluded in economy, which grows in a relationship of
structural dependence on the advanced capitalist countries.
The simplistic notion that increased science research
*This paper was originally published in The Higher
Education Review. Vol. 1, No, 2. will lead to technical change is the basis of the over three-fold
increase in the allocation for science research in Pakistan
during the Sixth Five Year Plan period (1983-88) compared to
the Fifth Five Year Plan ix It is also a view that has recently
been propounded by Prof. Abdus Salam, the Science Advisor
to successive Pakistani governments and the distinguished
Nobel laureate in theoretical physics. Referring to the sultans
and monarchs of successive Muslim empires in history who
were desirous of Western technology, Prof, Salam writes:
“But even while they envied and sought the technologies
involved, they failed to understand the basic interrelation
between science and technology. In 1799 for example Selim
Eli introduced the modern studies in algebra, trigonometry,
mechanics, ballistics and metallurgy into Turkey and
imported French and Swedish teachers — SO as to rival
European skills of gun founding. But he failed to accent
baste scientific research in these subjects and Turkey .never
caught up with Europe. “2
(Emphasis mine).
The implication of this statement is that the failure of
Turkey to catch up with European technology lay in its failure
to conduct basic science research. Prof. Salam goes on to
formulate this more explicitly when he proposes
‘‘Even to - day, when we have come to recognize that
technology is the sustenance and the power we have
not appreciated that there are no short cuts to it, that
basic science and its creation must equally become part
of our civilization as a precondition of a mastery of
science in application and technology.”3
(Emphasis mine). Basic science research in itself would be commendable
in terms of its educational value of developing the scientific
attitude in our society. However, before such research can be
expected to lead to technical change the industrial conditions
for the application of science to technology need to be created.
It is these conditions which Prof. Salam ignores when he
suggests that the means to rapid technological advance in
underdeveloped countries is to achieve the same level of
expenditure on science research (as a percentage of GNP) as
that prevalent in the advanced industrial economies. He
accordingly concludes by proposing:
“We must spend the international norm of 1 to 2 per
cent of GNP — mean annual expenditure of the order
of 4 billion dollars for the Islamic world— on research
and development with a quarter spent on pure science.”
In this paper we will suggest that the capacity of
science research to contribute to technical change in the
advanced capitalist countries has only been made possible by
certain specific characteristics of their production system,
which are currently absent in most underdeveloped countries
(especially the Islamic countries). The purpose of this paper is
to explore first the nature of the inter-action between science
and the inventive process in the advanced capitalist countries.
Second, to specify the features in the third world economics
which inhibit such an inter-action between domestic scientific
activity and technological change.
SECTION 1; SCIENCE AND INVENTIVE ACTIVITY
In this section we will discuss: (a) The relationship
between science and inventive activity and the way this has
changed with the changing structure of industry. (b) We will
analyze the factors that have determined the sequence and
timing of inventive activity during the process of the
development of capitalism. (a) Science and Technical Change
Historically, science could be systematically employed
in the service of industry only when certain changes had
occurred in the industrial structure, i.e. when the production
system had moved from the state of manufacture to that of
machine- based industry.
At the manufacturing stage the sequence of operations
which at the earlier handicrafts stage were performed by the
same craftsman, were now divided into separate steps each
performed by specialized workers. Although this division of
labour raised labour productivity, yet the growth of
productivity was still limited by the physical capacity of the
individual worker. The manufacturing period shared with the
earlier handicraft stage, this essential feature that it was a tool
using economy where the tool was manipulated by the worker.
Hence the maximum speed at which the tool could be operated
was determined by the limits of the hand-eye co-ordination
inherent in the design of the human anatomy. The machine
stage spelled a decisive break from the past in the sense that
the speed at which the tool could be operated was no more
limited by the human anatomy, i.e. the shift from the handoperated
process to the machine-operated process enabled the
design of the productive process to be determined not by the
physical characteristics of the human being but by scientific
research embodied in machine design. The possibilities of
labour productivity were thus greatly enlarged because the
efficiency of machines now became a function of the ability to
apply scientific knowledge to industry. It is in the context of
the extent to which science can be applied to industry that
another feature of modern industry acquires critical
importance: The engineering and capital goods sector, i.e., the
sector in which machines are produced by means of machines.
Thus the growth of capitalism to the stage of modern industry
allowed continuous and indefinite increases in labour
productivity because it created the conditions for the systematic application of science to
industry.
With the further development of capitalism two
additional changes have occurred in the industrial structure of
the advanced capitalist economies which have made the link
between science and industry in those economies even more
1ntense. These changes are:
i) The growing importance of the so-called “high
technology” industries (example computors and
electronics) which depend for their survival on
constantly extending the technological frontier
through the acquisition of the most advanced
scientific knowledge. Consequently such industries
have to establish their own R and D departments
where scientific research and product development
are inevitably closely linked as well as maintaining
close links with other sources of knowledge
such as universities and research centres.
ii) The introduction of flow processes in the Chemical
industries and of electronic control and automation
in other industries. These have necessitated an
understanding of the production process as a whole
as well as a grasp of the theoretical principles before
any improvements can be brought about. Here
again the need to maintain specialised R and D
departments has emerged.
The discussion above suggests that the link between
science and technology is not the simplistic one that technical
change flows out of science research, nor even that science
provides what industry- demands. There is in fact a much
more subtle relationship where by the systematic application
of scientific knowledge to industry becomes possible only
when the industrial structure itself has acquired certain
specif1c characteristics. b) The Growth of inventive activity: Supply Side versus
Demand Side constraints
Let us consider now the relationship between the growth of
scientific knowledge and the pattern and timing of inventive
activity.
It could be argued that in a general sense, the direction in
which science develops is influenced by social need as expressed in
the sphere of production. However, the particular time at which any
particular scientific discovery b available for the needs of inventive
activity is a function of the degree of complexity of the scientific
problem itself, These internal dynamics of scientific disciplines
therefore condition the specific timing of inventive activity. For
example it has been argued that one of the reasons why inventive
activity in industry was faster than that in agriculture in late 18th and
19th centuries was that the scientific disciplines (mechanics) on
which industrial invention was based were available earlier, while the
scientific disciplines like chemistry geology and physiology on which
inventive activity in a agriculture was based, developed much later.7
Not only is the pace and sequence of development of
scientific knowledge influenced by the degree of complexity of the
conceptual problems, but may also be constrained by the complexity
of the instruments of observation, which iii turn depend on the level
of development of the engineering industry. For example the
development of the biologic Sciences depended critically on the
microscope, just as the study of the atomic structure of molecules
depended on X-Ray Crystallography.
Schmookler claims that the pattern of inventive
activity in industries producing various classes of commodities
can be explained in terms of the composition of demand for
these commodity classes.9
In studying the issue of what determines the pattern of
ii activity, Schmookler considers two specific questions. How to explain:
1. Variations in inventive activity in any particular
industry over time.
2. Variations in the rates of inventive activity between
industries at a given moment in time. Taking new
patents as a measure of inventive activity, Schmookler
gives evidence to show that for many American
industries both time series as well as cross sectional data
show a high correlation between volume of sales and
inventive activity (in the case of time series correlation a
lagged correlation between in creases in volume of sales
and increase in inventive activity was observed).
Schmookler concluded from his evidence that the major
determinant of the changes in the distribution of
inventive activity was the changes in the demand for
various classes of inventions as manifested in the
demand for goods.
In his analysis, supply side factors (growth of scientific
knowledge) are relevant not in influencing the rate of
inventive activity, nor its distribution amongst various
commodity classes, but in determining the particular scientific
disciplines (mechanical, electrical chemical or biological)
upon which inventor will draw. Thus the growth of scientific
know e will determine the specific characteristics of
inventions Lie the purposes for which inventions are
undertaken and time at which they occur will be determined
by the demand for various commodity classes.10
There is an important assumption underlying this
argument that the inventive activity is determined primarily by
demand and that the development of scientific knowledge is
relevant only in determining which particular discipline the
inventor will draw on. The assumption is that there is in some
sense substitutability amongst the various scientific disciplines
in providing the knowledge base for a new invention. According to Rosenberg’ such substitution between the
various sub-disciplines of science is frequently absent and is
usually imperfect. In fact in many cases there is a
complementarity between the sub discipline a upon which the
inventive process draws. For example the development of the
new “High Yielding Varieties” of wheat and rice depended
primarily on biological research but had a high degree of
complementarity with chemical inputs (e.g. fertilizers and
pesticides).
If the various sub-disciplines are not perfectly
substitutable knowledge bases for particular inventions, then
the fact that the sub-disciplines grow at uneven rates would
affect the pattern of inventive activity over time. Thus as
Rosenberg suggests, many important human wants remained
unsatisfied despite a high demand for them. For example
although there was demand for the cure of infectious diseases
and medicine attracted many trained scientists, yet
improvements in the treatment of infectious diseases required
breakthroughs in the field of bacteriology.
Accordingly Rosenberg concludes that although
demand factors have determined the direction of inventive
activity yet the timing and pattern of inventive activity has
operated within the constraints imposed by a body of scientific
knowledge growing at uneven rates among its component subdisciplines.
SECTION II: WHY SCIENCE RESEARCH FAILS TO
RESULT IN INDIGENOUS TECHNICAL CHANGE IN
UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES
We have discussed in the previous section the relation
between science and inventive activity in industry in the
advanced capitalist countries, and have suggested the
importance of the growth of scientific knowledge as one of the
factors influencing the timing of inventive activity. We have also seen that this link between science and industry and the
growing intensity of this link is because of two fundamental
features of the industrial structure in advanced capitalist
economies:
1. The existence of a machine-making and
engineering industry which enables both the
systematic application of science to the needs of
industry as well as the orientation of the direction
of scientific development by the needs of industry.
2. The increasing degree of connectedness between
science and industry may (as Freeman argues)’ be
due to the growing importance in the industrial
structure of technology intensive industries which
depend for their survival on extending the techno
logical frontier.
In this section we will analyze the factors explaining
the absence of a link between science and industry in under
developed countries.
The explanation for the absence of a link between
sciences and industry in the third world countries is rooted in
the structural dependence of these economies on the
metropolitan economy.
In the post colonial era state power in these countries
came into the hands of the landlords and the comprador
bourgeoisie who were politically aligned to the metropolitan
bourgeoisie. The industrial development which was instituted
this ruling alliance had two important characteristics from the
perspective of our present analysis:
1) It was an “assembly plant industrialization” i.e.
it consisted of a shift of certain processes and
activities from the metropolitan to the under
developed economy. Consequently the under developed economy.13 Consequently the under
developed countries in many cases lacked an
industrial base of machine-building and
engineering industries which as we have seen is
a prerequisite for a link between domestic
science and industry.
2) Given the highly unequal distribution of income and
the influence of metropolitan culture, consumer
demand in underdeveloped countries was dominated
by the demand for Western, luxury goods. Industries
in underdeveloped countries naturally used imported
technology in the cases where they were directly
owned by foreign capital. But even domestically
owned enterprises used imported technology. The
reason for this was that once the demand for specific
products had been established there was usually little
choice in the techniques required to produce them.
14 However even when given the product, choice of
techniques did exist, there was a tendency in many
under developed countries, to employ capitalintensive
imported technology. There are three
reasons for this:
i) The overvaluation of the exchange rate and
the provision of government subsidized
loans to industrialists (which were policies
associated with import substitution
industrialization during the 1950s and
1960s) ‘distorted’ relative factor prices
making capital relatively cheap. This
induced entrepreneurs to select capitalintensive
imported technology even when
an efficient-labour intensive substitute was
domestically available.
ii) In the contemporary period under pressure
from international loan giving agencies, many underdeveloped countries have been obliged
to go in for exchange rate devolution and
withdraw subsidies to bring the domestic
price of capital closer to the international
market price. However in spite of the
increased price of capital, entrepreneur in
underdeveloped countries continue to choose
the capital- intensive technique in order to
avoid ‘‘labour Problem” In countries where
extremes of wealth and poverty co-exist the
urban labour force in many cases is often well
- organized and capable of putting
pressure on the management. Under
these circumstances entrepreneurs prefer to
go for automation in order to achieve greater
control over the production process, even if
the imported capital— intensive technique is
relatively more expensive than the local
labour - intensive one. In such cases where
the entrepreneur selects imported technology,
the entrepreneur is obliged to import the
entire technology package because of the
form in which techno logy is marketed
internationally. The result is that the
technology package imported is often more
expensive than if the entrepreneur had
imported the individual components from
different sources.15
iii) In countries where foreign aid finances the
import component of development projects
there is a tendency on the part of the local
elite to select projects which are capitalintensive
and which use imported technology.
Apart from this, projects financed by foreign
aid are in most cases ‘tied’ to importing the
technology from the aid - giving country.16The result of the above features of dependent
industrialization was the divorce of domestic scientific
institutions in underdeveloped countries from the process of
industrial development. Domestic scientific activity could not
be applied to industry, nor could the demands of industry
influence the orientation of domestic scientific effort as they
had done in the case of advanced capitalist countries. (See
Section II). Under these circumstances, as Charles Cooper’
suggests, the direction of domestic research is mainly
determined by the decisions of the individual researcher, who
in turn takes his cue from the concerns of international
academic research. Hence “scientific communities in
underdeveloped countries are outposts of advanced country
science with very limited links with economic and social
realities which surround them.” 18
Amilcar Herrara19 has argued that the failure of science
to serve industry in underdeveloped countries cannot be
entirely explained in terms of the nature of the production
system in underdeveloped countries. He argues that the ruling
classes deliberately refrain from instituting those changes in
the production system which would be necessary for a link
between science and industry, because such changes (example
radical re-distribution of income and assets, and disassociation
of the economy from the structure of dependence) would
undermine the political power of the ruling class itself.
Herrara goes beyond this to suggest that even autonomous
scientific institutions, that are separate from industry, are not
tolerated by the ruling class, for such institutions become
centres for free discussion and criticism of government policy.
This is regarded as subversive and governments therefore take
active measures to undermine the autonomous science centres
by reducing grants and repressing free discussion. In this way,
given the political context within which separation of science
institutions from industry occurs, there is a tendency for these
science institutions to cease being “scientific”. CONCLUSION
We have suggested in this paper that the large increase
in the funds allocated for science research n Pakistan is based
on a misconceived premise That increased science research
will lead to technical change within the country We have
argued that the systematic application of science research to 1
technology requires a particular kind of industrial
characterized by highly-developed ‘machine-pro g industries.
Such an industrial structure does not exist underdeveloped
countries like Pakistan which have experienced an ”assembly
plant industrialization” within a framework of structural
dependence on the advanced capita- countries.
In Section I, we examined the nature of the
relationship science research and technical change We
indicated that in the case of the European economy it was only
when ad reached the machine-producing stage t scientific
research could be systematically applied to industry In the
temporary economy of the advanced capitalist countries
relationship between science research and technology has
particularly intense as the result of the emergence new
characteristics in their industrial structure, which are
nonexistent in underdeveloped countries
a) The growing importance of “high technology”
industries such as computers and electronics.
b) The introduction of flow processes in chemical
industries and electronic control.
These new industries require for their development, the
application of knowledge at the frontiers of science research.
We suggested further, that in the course of the
development of the advanced capitalist countries, there was a two way inter-action between science research and industry,
i.e. the application of science research to the development of
the engineering industry, in turn made possible the
development of new instruments of observation (e.g. electron
micro scope, etc.) which stimulated the growth of science
research. The ‘absence in under-developed countries of the
institutions and industries which link science research with
industry, results in the science establishments in these
countries becoming “outposts’ of advanced country science
with little relevance to the needs and concerns of the local
society.
In Section II of this paper we examined some of the
characteristics of economic growth in underdeveloped
countries, and pointed out that the nature of dependent
industrialization, was such that the necessary conditions for an
inter-action between domestic science research and
technology, have not emerged in these countries. Given the
highly unequal distribution of income in U.D.C. the demand
pattern for goods is oriented towards luxury consumer goods
which tend to be either imported, or assembled locally with
imported technology. Thus the pattern of consumer demand
itself limits the choice of technology to that available abroad.
However given the product, whatever flexibility exists with
respect to using indigenously developed technology is further
restricted by the conditionality clauses of foreign aid on which
most U.D.C. are dependent. The nature of technology
transfers, and the phenomenon of “technology packaging”
further limits the ability of U.D.C. to introduce locallydeveloped
technological ideas to imported technology. Under
these circumstances, we have argued that science research in
U.D.C. while it may fulfill a long term educational objective
of developing “The scientific attitude” cannot be expected to
induce indigenous technical change, unless fundamental
structural changes are brought about in the economy and
society. Notes and References
1. Planning Commission, Government of Pakistan, The Sixth
Five Year Plan (1 983-88), May 1983, p. 283.
2. Salam, Prof. Abdus, “An Islamic Case for Basic Science
Research,” , Muslim, Friday June 3, 1983, Friday Magazine, p. 1.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Hill S.C., and Bell R.M., Paradigms and Practice, SPRU
Sussex, August 1974, Revised Draft, p. 7.
6. Freeman, C., The Economics of Industrial Innovation,
Penguin Books Ltd., 1974, p. 30.
7. Rosenberg N., Perspectives on Technology, Cambridge
University Press, 1976, p. 136.
8. Ibid., p. 269.
9. Schmookler J., Invention and Economic Growth,
Cambridge Harvard University Press, 1966, cited in N.
Rosenberg, op. cit., p.261.
10. Ibid.
11. Rosenberg N., Perspectives on Technology, Cambridge
University Press, 1976, p. 271.
12. Freeman C., cited in Hill and Bell, op. cit., p. 7.
13. Patnaik, P., “The Political Economy of Underdevelopment”
in Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay), February
1973, p. 201.
Also see: 1) Baran, P.A., Political Economy of Growth.
M.R. New York, 1966.
2) Frank, A.G., Capitalism and Underdevelopment
in Latin America. Pelican 1969.3) Szentes, T., Political Economy of Underdevelop
ment, Akademlai Kiado, Budapest, 1971.
14. Stewart, Frances, “Choice of Technique in Developing
Countries,” in Charles Cooper (ed.) Science, Technology
and Development, Frank Case, London, 1974.
15. For an analysis of technological dependence associated with
packaging, See: Vaitsos: Inter Country Income Distribution and
Transnational Corporations. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1974.
16. By far the largest proportion of aid received by Pakistan, for
example, was in the form of project assistance (73% in
1979-80). Such aid is tied in most cases to the source, i.e.
the item involved In the project have to be purchased from
suppliers In the aid- giving country:
See: Pakistan Economic Survey, 1979.80, Government of
Pakistan, Economic Advisor’s Wing, Islamabad, 1980, p. 155.
17. Charles Cooper, op. cit.
18. Ibid.
19. Herrara, Amilcar, Social Determinants of Science Policy in
Latin America In Cooper (ed.) op. cit.
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