Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson

But science didn't work like capitalism. That was the rub, that was one of the rubs in the general dysfunction of the world. Capitalism rules, but money was too simplistic and inadequate a measure of the wealth that science generated. In science, one built up over the course of a career a fund of "scientific credit," by giving work to the system in a way that would seem altruistic. People remembered what you gave, and later there were various forms of return on the gift - jobs, labs. In that sense a good investment for the individual, but in the form of a gift to the group. It was the non zero-sum game that the prisoner's dilemma could become if everyone played by the strategies of always generous, or, better, firm but fair. That was one of the things that science was  -- a place that one entered by agreeing to hold to the strategies of cooperation, to maximize the total return of the game.

p. 124

What a wonderful description of the process of science, the cooperation to build something more than the sum of the parts. What a great thing!