this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Science cannot exist without finance. Science and its practitioners do not exist in a vacuum. Who are going to feed the "scientists"? Or who are going to be the "scientists"? It takes time and resources to train "scientists". It also takes time and resources to ensure knowledge is inherited and shared. That is why renaissance and enlightenment is such a big deal in history.
That is why renaissance and enlightenment is such a big deal in history.>
Umm...capitalism didn't exist in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations wasn't published until 1776. Most of Europe was still feudal during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. England is the exception, but England was always the exception. So, I'm not sure what you're talking about. The Royal Society, for which Newton, Hooke, Halley, etc., were all members of, was funded by the Crown, hence the name, "Royal Society". The European savants all had royal patrons, like Leibniz, Brahe, and Huygens, that funded their livelihoods.
For note, I am a published historian by education that specialized in Tudor England.
Capitalism as a classification/concept did not exist does not mean the practice did not exist. Capital (both in kind and in mind) accumulation has been occurring since even the stone age. Of course we would not call those societies capitalistic.
Plus I am replying to the comment that tries to dismember science from finance/economy.
Nope. What you mean is science cannot exist without resources. In wartime, countries switch to a production economy and finance is not executed when building all the war supply. The country simply has the resources to execute the production directly. It could also execute science as well, as seen in the manhattan project. It could also ensure the knowledge transfer and upbringing of future scientists too. But when government is for sale, laws protect the interests of the buyer. Simple as that.
And please enlighten me on where the resources come from and how they are allocated. Do the coal/oil/gas buried deep under earth dig themselves out or the cattle/pigs/chickens will automagically grow and serve themselves on our dinner table? Command economies can only work spontaneously. The Nazi and the USSR both did have made spectacular achievements over the course of their existence. But is the process sustainable? No. That was why they both failed eventually.
The US did not become the arsenal of democracies by centralizing all the industries during the second World War. The private industries involved a lot. You can say that paved way for the future military-industrial complex. Even the secretive Manhattan project had a number of corporate partners.