Article
from
The New York Times
The Practical Uses of Pure ResearchWriting about government, supported science in 1957, A.H. Dupree, the historian, said:
“The mighty edifice of Government science dominated the scene in the middle of the 20th century as a Gothic cathedral dominated a 13th century landscape. The work of many hands over many years, it universally inspired admiration, wonder and fear.”
These words describe the situation that still existed near the end of the sixties, and indeed Dupree’s edifice has grown more than fivefold since he first wrote. However, many cracks are appearing in this edifice, and there are signs that those of fear are displacing the emotions of admiration and wonder.
This edifice has been abuilding over three centuries. It is the product of a conscious and extraordinary prescient revolution begun by Francis Bacon and carried on by the Royal Society in the 17th century.
Value of Works
The revolution resulted from the union of intellectual and utilitarian skills, from the realization of the cumulative character of scientific knowledge, but above all from putting “experiments of light” ahead of “experiments of fruit.” Although Bacon believed that his new method of discovering knowledge would revolutionize the material condition of mankind, he insisted that “works themselves are of greater value as pledges of truth than as contributing to the comforts of life.”
Yet, although society adopted Bacon’s revolution, it has never quite believed in it. It has always hoped to get the fruits with the light. During the period after World War II science and Government reached a specially effective accommodation. The experience of the war had demonstrated that even the most abstract and esoteric science could have major practical consequences.
Government began to support science generously and in terms of its fruits-principally defense and health and to a lesser degree, agriculture and economic growth. However, within these broad categories of social purpose scientists were left fairly free to pursue knowledge according to their own conceptions and priorities
In the late 1960’s, however, the 20 year-long national consensus that encouraged the autonomous pursuit of science had started to erode, and the scientific, community enters the 1970’s with grave apprehensions for the future of a society that appears to be turning its back on one of the failures of science.
Science, or rather science and engineering together, have been spectacularly successful in achieving most of the goals for which the American people supported them so generously. It is the goals themselves that have turned to dust in men’s mouths and generated a reaction against science.
Man walked on the moon before the deadline set by President Kennedy, but this achievement was seen by many Americans as nothing, but an arrogant piece of conspicuous consumption. We attained military strength unsurpassed in the history of the world, but found that national security eluded us, indeed declined with the appearance of every new weapons system.
Science produced impressive achievement in the control and cure of disease. But the relative quality and the medical care available to much of the population declined. Science produced a revolution in agriculture that enabled 5 per cent of the population to feed the rest while retiring land from production and feeding starving millions in other countries.
Yet in the midst of this plenty, Americans were shocked of hunger and malnutrition in their own population, and of the population of the environment by pesticides, fertilizers, and agricultural waste.
Science produced dramatic changes in communications, entertainment, transportation, and information processing, but instead of bringing about one world, this revolution seemed only to increase the complexity and impersonality of life, threatening privacy, glorifying violence, and bringing all the pain and suffering and injustice of the world into the living room.
The benefits of technology were rapidly taken for granted and lost to sight while the bad side effects of technology captured the headlines.
The support of science for its fruits tended to confuse science with technology in the public mind with the result that the bad effects of the application of technology were attributed to science. The antiscience, antirationalist views held by a literacy elite have been popularized by the mass media, and have had great appeal to an educated younger generation.
Other Weaknesses
Support of science primarily for its fruits has disclosed other weaknesses. As society changes its priorities with increasing rapidity, the basic sciences that received their support because of supposed fruits suffer, while others benefit faster than they can produce results.
Thus, the physical sciences, whose support was heavily tied to national security expenditures, are especially vulnerable at the present time, while the social sciences and ecology are the object of expectations of immediate answers to pressing social problems, expectations that they are scarcely ready to fulfill.
Science and technology are becoming increasingly tied down to currently perceived social and political priorities with less opportunity to advance their own conceptual structure. The system of support for science thus loses the opportunity for science itself to generate the options for new priorities in the future. Many of the complaints against science are really complaints against obsolete political priorities and institutions and the failure of science to break outside the bounds, of the society that provides its resources.
Furthermore, the public has failed to appreciate that science is successful not only when it generates opportunities for successful new technology, but also when it provides a sounder basis for choice among alternative technologies, including the knowledge and arguments needed not to choose certain options.
A system of support of science less tied to its immediate possible fruits could release science to provide greater guidance for future social priorities and long-range planning. The results of fundamental science are most important for the social problems and technological choices with which we will be faced 20 years from now.
Military Argument
The military use to justify the support of science on the ground that it helped them to avoid “technological surprise,” unexpected technical development in the hands of a potential enemy. Today the main dangers of a technological surprise lie in the physical environment or in unanticipated social impact.
The arguments for greater fundamental understanding to avoid this sort of surprise are even more compelling than in the case of the military, and yet they are little appreciated by the public or politicians. Furthermore, just because we are dealing with the element of “surprise” we cannot afford to be too selective in our exploration into the future. The problems that we can foresee today and toward which we might be tempted to direct our science too exclusively may not be most important a decade or so hence.
If science is to continue to contribute to society in the 1970’s, it will have to find new ways of shielding itself partially from these political breezes, so that it can concentrate on long-term problems – both those of society and those internal to the structure of science itself.
This undoubtedly means a trend toward more direct support of institutions as such and also a trend toward greater concentration of support for both basic science and for both basic science and for academic science generally in a single federal agency charged with looking at the health of science in its entirety, including the health of scientific institutions and advanced education.