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]

[Phys-l] a welfare program for scientists and engineers



From a 2006 book "The Scientist as Rebel" by Freeman Dyson (page 25):

"The scientific advances of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth were generally beneficial to society as a whole, spreading wealth to rich and poor alike with some degree of equity. The electric light, the telephone, the refrigerator, radio, television, synthetic fabrics, antibiotics, vitamins, and vaccines were social equalizers, making life easier and more comfortable for almost everybody, tending to narrow the gap between rich and poor rather than to widen it. Only in the second half of our century has the balance of advantage shifted. During the last forty years, the strongest efforts in pure science have been concentrated in highly esoteric fields remote from contact with everyday problems. Particle physics, low-temperature physics, and extragalactic astronomy are examples of pure sciences moving further and further away from their origins. The intensive pursuit of these sciences does not do much harm, or much good, to either the rich or the poor. The main social benefit provided by pure science in esoteric fields is to serve as a welfare program for scientists and engineers."
_______________________________________________________
Ludwik Kowalski, a retired physicist
5 Horizon Road, apt. 2702, Fort Lee, NJ, 07024, USA
Also an amateur journalist at http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalskil/cf/