The Price of Prestige

136 chapter five

investments, the quest for knowledge, and the influence of domestic inter-

est groups. But even when we combine all these explanations, an important

aspect of Big Science is still missing. None of these explanations accounts

for what makes Big Science so “Big.” Describing the Apollo program as

the result of a curiosity regarding the geomorphology of the moon, a de-

sire to improve missile and satellite technology, and domestic lobbying

activity provides a very partial view of the American space program. In

fact, such an account misses the essence of the space race altogether.

The hypotheses above focus on primary utility — on the instrumental

material value of each project. They therefore provide very little insight

into the social logic of Big Science. By definition, they ignore secondary-

utility considerations. Once we introduce secondary- utility considerations,

such as the desire to acquire prestige, into the analysis, the preference for

conspicuousness and the insensitivity to cost become understandable and

even predictable. Moreover, since prestige is a positional good, the com-

petitive aspect of Big Science becomes predictable as well. Thus, analyz-

ing Big Science as a case of conspicuous consumption fills many of the

holes left by primary- utility explanations while offering a compelling the-

oretical account for the often- cited connection between Big Science and

prestige.

It is important to reemphasize that we are dealing here with comple-

mentary rather than competing explanations. Decisions are rarely the

result of a single motivation. In order to better isolate the role played by

secondary utility, we need to find cases in which primary- utility consider-

ations are weak or nonexistent. In the context of Big Science, these will be

basic- research projects that involve little to no applied science. Since these

distinctions were much clearer in earlier centuries, pre- twentieth- century

Big Science could serve as a productive environment for the disentangle-

ment of primary utility from claims of status and prestige. Furthermore,

eighteenth- and nineteenth- century examples are even more striking than

contemporary Big Science given the limited governmental funding for

civilian services at the time.

Although the Manhattan Project is often cited as the first case of

Big Science, this is inaccurate. None of the components that make Big

Science — size, government funding, media hype, international competi-

tion — is unique to the twentieth century. In the eighteenth century, for

example, the ship was the most complex and expensive scientific instrument

(Sorrenson 1996 , 224 ). Only states or very large corporations could afford

ships, and hence, almost any scientific endeavor that involved seafaring