Chronology | Current Month | Current Thread | Current Date |
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] | [Date Index] [Thread Index] | [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] | [Date Prev] [Date Next] |
I have to disagree with Bernard's implicit conclusion that "directed"
research is necessarily a more efficient use of the taxpayers' money.
It is estimated that about 25% of the world's economy depends on the quantum
mechanics of silicon. Product oriented research has given us a number of
interesting inventions, but none of these have had the positive impact on
our standard of living that the development of quantum mechanics has.
No one set out to develop QM because it might have practical applications.
Instead, the driving force was the one behind all basic science; namely, the
desire to UNDERSTAND the world around us.
The example most frequently cited of this is the case of
x-rays. Can you imagine that an organized research project in, say,
1890, would have come up with x-rays, as the better way to locate
bullets and other shrapnel in wounds?
The drive to explore the unknown is deep in the human psyche.
Most of the money spent on science is used to buy or build things
that provide employment and income to countless non-scientists,
But we could do better in our funding of both science and the arts.
Not nearly enough of it goes to finance work at the truly outer edges
of either field. Scientists have learned that to get a grant they
have to write their proposal almost as if they already knew the
answer they were asking the money to find (but of course, if you
already know the answer, it is no longer science), and artists have
learned that the best way to get funding for their projects is to
keep them firmly within the bounds of the acceptable norms. The
avant-garde stuff just pisses too many people off. So as a result,
much of the money we spend on science and the arts ends up being
wasted, but not in the sense most people think of waste. The waste
comes in when we keep on doing what has been done before. The true
value of public financing of science and the arts comes when the
grants are given to those who are willing to strike off into the
unknown, even if they fail.