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Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science
Bottom of the pile
12
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
6/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Audra J. Wolfe
Publisher:
Johns Hopkins University Press
Date:
November 20, 2024
Of psy-ops, seismic detection, and other emanations of the Cold War as it was conducted in petri dishes and cyclotrons.
What The Reviewers Say
Wolfe’s new book, Freedom’s Laboratory, frontally addresses questions of what science is, how it is best done, and how it (and scientists themselves) might be strategically deployed to advance national interests. As suggested by its subtitle — The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science — after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a global free-for-all to win hearts, minds, and markets. This extended to 'science.' Americans exerted their minds and money to distinguish a 'good' American science from its communist — and, therefore, by definition compromised — counterpart.
In this engaging and dense study of the politics of science in the Cold War era, historian Wolfe examines a puzzling paradox: In an era of McCarthy-ite redbaiting and witch-hunting, how could scientists with leftist affiliations keep on working on classified projects related to that struggle against the Communist bloc?.
Historian Wolfe offers a thoughtful, thoroughly researched history of how the American government employed science and scientists to improve world opinion of liberal democracy during the Cold War. She writes informatively about the political events and issues that influenced American policymakers, among them the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik and the debate over atomic weapons proliferation. Wolfe also focuses on how, as the Cold War progressed, the CIA, in service to using the American scientific community as a weapon of propaganda, became increasingly involved in influencing or controlling the exchange of scientific information between scientists in the U.S. and its allies.
