The social function of science or What John Bernal’s book can teach us today. Essay review of D. D. Bernal’s book “The Social Function of Science” (1938)

Abstract

: This review is devoted to the book “The Social Function of Science” published in 1939 by Irish crystallographer John Desmond Bernal. This work is often cited as a starting point in the field of science of science and/or scientometrics, but to this day it has not been published in Russian. Recognized as a classic on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War — a period of active institutionalization of the abovementioned disciplines, it remains relevant to this day. Both leading international researchers in the field of scientometrics (Derek de Solla Price and Eugene Garfield) and Soviet authors (e.g., Vasily Nalimov) have often recognized the book as the key milestone in the discipline’s formation. Moreover, Bernal’s contribution is interesting for the analysis of the relationship between science, state and society, which the attentive reader will find useful even today. Being sympathetic to the socialist approach to science planning, the Irish Marxist analyzes the critical shortcomings of capitalist science: weak funding, lack of organization and planning, harmful alignment with militarism, individualism and the absence of its main social function, i.e. the focus on the prosperity of humanity.

For citation: Kislenko, I. (2026) The social function of science or What John Bernal’s book can teach us today. Essay review of D. D. Bernal’s book “The Social Function of Science” (1938). Russia’s Directions. Vol. 4. No. 2. P. 97–111.

Additional Info

Submitted: March 31, 2026

Copyright: © Auhtors, 2026

Distribution: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)