One proxy for measuring the creation of knowledge could be the number of people engaged in that activity. Not all knowledge is scientific (is it?), but governments tend to keep an eye on how many people are either practicing science or studying it. In the U.S. and the U.K., people are worried that the numbers are decreasing. Does the rest of the world make up for the shortcomings?
Well, someone has done some work on this: Via Google Answers we see... (and boy, is Google Answers great)
- The number of scientists in the United States doubled very quickly in the past. "the number of scientists increased from 150,000 to 2,685,000 between 1950 and 2001" but growth from 2001 projected to 2010 is much more modest, with only medical scientists having doubled in the previous decade and projected to grow at the substantial rate of... 26.5% in this decade we're in.
- According to the OECD Observer (January 2004), the number of researchers in the OECD rose 42% from 1990-2000, which won't get the doubling job done. The article talked briefly about foreign researchers filling the gap...
So how about those Chinese scientists? Those Indian software geniuses?
- An article in Intellectual Property Watch says the number of patents filed in India has increased 50% in the past 5 years, without offering numbers. That's a big increase, but only half of what would be needed to double human knowledge, if we used patent filings as a proxy for new human knowledge (and found that percentage increases were similar worldwide). And if we are counting on India and China to fill a gap caused by U.S. and U.K. reductions in research and researchers, this would not support that thesis.
- In fact, patent applications to the World International Patent Office last year reached a record 145,300 in 2006, according to this article in Inc.com. But the article notes that this increase was only 6.4% year-on-year, and the United States accounted for one third, followed by Japan and Germany. This shows no evidence of 5-year doubling (you need an annual growth rate of 14.78% to double in five years), and no evidence that Asia will replace more traditional centers of knowledge production.