Is More Science Really Less Science? The Scientization of Science, 1900–2020

Abstract Sixty years ago, Derek de Solla Price’s influential Little Science, Big Science first documented that from 1900 scientific publications doubled every 10–15 years and then predicted that limited resources would end rapid progress leading to an imminent “scientific doomsday”—a strikingly false prediction given that contemporary global mega-science annually yields 3.5 million mainline STEMM journal research papers. Nevertheless, the idea of a coming crisis persists—supposedly current expansion is stagnating quality. Argued instead is that what was missed, then and now, is a worldwide deepening of scientization —the embedding of science as a core social institution, marked by expanded research capacity, diversification into new domains, and increasing specialization. Employing sociological insights about historical institutional development, Price’s empirics are extended to explain why STEMM productivity never plateaued. Fueled by a worldwide education revolution, universities enact three institutionalizing roles: institutional entrepreneurs; main corporate units of research ; and a fiduciary of the generalized symbolic medium of papers. Illustrated by analyses from a recent bibliometric study of 3.3 million papers from 1900 to 2020, it is further suggested that instead of decline, through university-driven scientization the scale and capacity of science as a mature institution reshape the dynamics of discovery supporting sustained growth and quality.