Introduction

Résumé 0

The 1960's remain the golden age of scientific research in many scientists' mind. Scientific community could not be more content with the abundance of available funds and open posts. France is only one example of this expansion. For a better understanding, we decided to return to this period, in order to complete what had already been discussed about research policy during de Gaulle's time. This expansion in the sixties began with the end of the war and even before. The role reserved for research in the political project of Pierre Mendès France shows a certain continuation with the French scientific community's queries. Do the initiatives taken around the meeting in Caen constitute premises of a scientific policy ?, asks François Jacq. Well, it is at the beginning of the sixties that we find one of the first definitions of scientific policy in a working document submitted to the first meeting of ministries of research from the OECD's countries (1963). « The scientific policy [...] points out a complicated set of personal ideas, tendencies and attitudes of groups and institutions, tactical realities, practical temporary abilities and necessary arrangements from which are defined national decisions about orientation of science, speed of its evolution and national aims which it must work towards. » The three other features in this issue of La Revue are examples of research fields derived from the idea of the national priorities that science is meant to realize. A symbol of national power and an important component of military research, space research will become autonomous with the creation of CNES, even if CNRS will continue to participate in it with its laboratories. The automatic translation is one of those fields that is difficult to place between basic and applied research. Oceanography, the origins of which lie in the beginning of the twentieth century, becomes an important field, with underwater resources at stake. These are three examples in radically different fields that demonstrate the narrow nature of disciplinary distinctions. Classical bounds between these fields of research will split up and drive the expansion of science, thus rendering less clear the scope of pertinence for various disciplines.