The magazine of the european research area European Commission Copenhagen, a missed chance?

Mouse lung.

Burgeoning of the AIDS virus.  

The virus exits from the infected 

cell with the help of cellular partners 

of the cytoskeleton, which are very 

present in the cell extensions called 

filopoda. 

© ESO/S. Gillessen 

et al

.

Centre of the Milky Way.

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RESEARCH UNDER 

THE MICROSCOPE

 research

*

eu No. 63 | APRIL 2010 

23

New sciences?

In an article in the journal Minerva, Andrea Bonaccorsi, Professor of 

Innovation Economics and Sociology of Science at the University of Pisa, 

attempts to characterise what he calls the ‘new sciences’. These are 

the organised bodies of knowledge – information sciences, materials 

sciences and life sciences based on molecular biology – which have been 

developed after the Second World War and all of which are structurally 

different, he notes, from traditional disciplines like physics, chemistry 

or astronomy.

Contrary to what is often said, he insists, the approach of these new 

sciences is marked, no less than the old ones, by ‘reductionism’, that 

is the desire to ‘replace the visibly complicated by the invisibly simple’, 

to quote the famous French physicist Jean Perrin. Nor are these sciences 

more distinct in terms of interdisciplinarity, or, more fundamentally 

in each case, by a more applied orientation, in response to social needs 

and economic pressures. 

For Bonaccorsi, what defines them essentially is the shape of the 

dynamics of research. Theirs is a more ‘industrial’ dynamic, characterised 

by rapid growth and a high degree of diversification, linked to a tendency 

towards diverging problem areas – with each explanatory hypothesis 

in turn opening up a new research programme. 

In support of his thesis, Bonaccorsi exploits the results of a comparative 

analysis of the frequency of new words in scientific publications in these 

three new fields of research, compared with publications in the traditional 

and well-established field of high energy physics. Interesting views like 

these should be qualified and supplemented. Moreover, it would have 

been possible to say all this in a somewhat lighter and simpler way. 

But let’s not complain: compared to that of many of his fellow academics, 

Andrea Bonaccorsi’s style is (almost) that of Voltaire. 

 Michel André

A d

B

i P f

f

IN BRIEF

produced by the cell itself or 

whether they came from neigh-

bouring infected cells. Until now 

little was known about the mecha-

nisms of intercellular infection 

of the AIDS virus. These discoveries 

bring a new dynamic dimension 

to this process.