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CHAPTER 18 The Foundations and Projectism
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230 THE ORGANIZATION MAN ceivable that we can confidently measure the questions that separate us from total truth; that we can say we know what is unknown. He can say also that we have heard all this before; that epoch after epoch, technicians have assured him of the imminent completion of human knowledge, and that they have always been wrong. And thank heavens they have been! The implications otherwise would be too awful to accept-for then, with knowledge finite, with all the mystery and the challenge gone, what a crashing, futile bore our world would bel cHAPTER 18 The Foundations and Projectism THE BUREAUCRATIZATION CAN BE REVERSED. FOR THE MAN WHO WANTS to escape the mesh of organization, to ask his own questions, and to ask them for the sheer hell of it, the foundations are the last best hope. Alone of our big institutions, they do not have to yield to the pressures of immediacy or the importunings of the balance sheet. They have the money to invigorate individual research and they have the franchise. The job they have assigned themselves is not to support the status quo hut to do what others cannot do or are too blind to do. And how have the foundations responded to this challenge? They are not countering the bureaucratization of research; they are intensifying it. Their support of the social sciences is the best yardstick of their performance. They have many other interests: Rockefeller, for example , has a long tradition of support-very enlightened support, too-in the biological sciences. But social-science research is the chief area common to all three, and they have become the critical source of support for it. The money they give is only a small part of the total spent on social science, but most other money has strings on it. Of the $38 million given by the government, all but $2 million goes to applied, large-scale team projects. Business milks basic research, for it eventually uses the techniques developed by academic researchers, but it has shown no disposition to support it at The Foundations and Projectism 231 all, and the universities, with few exceptions, have little money left over after salaries and housekeeping expenses are paid. As their "restricted" funds for contract research have gone up, their "free" funds have gone down. If the social scientist wishes to take a leave of absence from the team-in short, if he wishes to exercise his own curiosity and not somebody else's-it is to the foundations that he must tum. Here is the way they apportion their funds. Of the roughly $11,5oo,ooo a year average (based on 1953-54) they have been giving to social science, only $2.8 million goes to individual projects or fellowships. $8.7 million-or 76 per cent of the total-goes to big team projects and institutions. ONE OF THE ANOMALIES IN THIS SITUATION IS THAT YOU CAN'T GET AN argument from foundation people on the subject of the individual. In principle, they are for him, and few are so emphatic, and quite sincerely so, that it's the man and not the program that counts, every time. But. They too are organization men. There are difficulties, they explain . The Ford Foundation argues that it just has to give its money in large-scale grants, and while it could give a bit more to individuals and still get rid of its money, it's not likely to get very enthusiastic about such a course. Not only financially, but philosophically, it would be a diversion; the "problem-solving," action approach is the foundation's basic strategy, and this puts something of a premium on the virtues of well-directed, administered, co-ordinated projects. The foundation's officials are quite frank about it. "We'll plead guilty," Rowan Gaither, Jr., president of the foundation, said to me of the disparity. "We do try and take care of the individual, but it's hard in a foundation of this size. It's very hard to support individuals without a staff of about one thousand, so we prefer to rely upon other institutions to provide this service for us." Giving to individuals, to put it another way, costs too much. Carnegie and Rockefeller have devoted proportionately more to individual research, but their officers make much the same point. It often takes just as much work to make a $5,000 grant to an individual, they argue, as it...