Apart from the obvious answer (fund me, I am a good person and deserving of taxpayer support)..... society can only tolerate activities which do not contribute to economic survival beyond a certain critical mass of population and overall economy size. In today's multinetworked world, where we can support Paris Hilton (understand me here, dear reader: every second that you have ever spent reading an article about her, or seen her on TV in some lame reality show has directly or indirectly contributed to her income: hence I do not mean 'support Paris Hilton' in any metaphorical sense.. this is real), we can certainly support some science.
Ok, but shouldn't we support only the science which helps us? Hmmm.. define science which 'helps us'. Most of the great revolutions of recent times have come out of unfettered 'ocean foam' thought. Quantum mechanics has lead to every solid state electronic device that enriches and makes your daily existence possible. It is not possible to classify science as useful and useless, although one might argue that the grant system of research does just that. But one thinks that the world is in very real danger of throttling intellect and exterminating creativity by demanding a clearly measurable outcome from any and every scientific project undertaken. There are no more cases of 'lets see what happens'. Every decent grant proposal is hypothesis driven, and must have a clearly defined and achievable objective. But this fetters thought, and those truly outstanding 'where no one has gone before' experiments may be a thing of the past. That would be a sad day for science indeed. That would be a sad day for humanity.
But do people care? For the most part, no. Hence, of course we are faced with such outrageous nonsense as people saying that the Mars project should be abandoned, because clearly, life originated on Earth, and hence any other planet is boring. So, what is the price we place on space exploration? Here are some answers.
The rejoinder to my arguments: that the economy cannot support such activity is rather untrue. I have no numbers to make my case, but a strong belief that if we (as in the whole world) stopped making guns and paying our CEOs/Presidents/Dictators so much, we would have money for clean water, food, housing, antibiotics for everyone on Earth. And maybe some money left over for stargazers, poets and cultural anthropologists.
Let me finish by mentioning that the dedication in 'Gravitation', by Wheeler, Misner and Thorne, if I remember is to 'the taxpayer who funds research'. Thank you, dear taxpayer.
Ok, but shouldn't we support only the science which helps us? Hmmm.. define science which 'helps us'. Most of the great revolutions of recent times have come out of unfettered 'ocean foam' thought. Quantum mechanics has lead to every solid state electronic device that enriches and makes your daily existence possible. It is not possible to classify science as useful and useless, although one might argue that the grant system of research does just that. But one thinks that the world is in very real danger of throttling intellect and exterminating creativity by demanding a clearly measurable outcome from any and every scientific project undertaken. There are no more cases of 'lets see what happens'. Every decent grant proposal is hypothesis driven, and must have a clearly defined and achievable objective. But this fetters thought, and those truly outstanding 'where no one has gone before' experiments may be a thing of the past. That would be a sad day for science indeed. That would be a sad day for humanity.
But do people care? For the most part, no. Hence, of course we are faced with such outrageous nonsense as people saying that the Mars project should be abandoned, because clearly, life originated on Earth, and hence any other planet is boring. So, what is the price we place on space exploration? Here are some answers.
The rejoinder to my arguments: that the economy cannot support such activity is rather untrue. I have no numbers to make my case, but a strong belief that if we (as in the whole world) stopped making guns and paying our CEOs/Presidents/Dictators so much, we would have money for clean water, food, housing, antibiotics for everyone on Earth. And maybe some money left over for stargazers, poets and cultural anthropologists.
Let me finish by mentioning that the dedication in 'Gravitation', by Wheeler, Misner and Thorne, if I remember is to 'the taxpayer who funds research'. Thank you, dear taxpayer.
2 comments:
I totally agree with free-form science research and you are right in saying that they cost so little compared to all the money that's wasted on destruction (Think Iraq war).
That said, you can't compare people supporting Paris Hilton with supporting science. Paris Hilton provides entertainment, you may not like it, but some people are willing to pay to see that entertainment and that's their choice.
The right argument is to show how science helps people and explain to them how you cannot measure the benefits directly. Like every thing else in a capitalistic society, some times you have to bend the reality to make it easier for NSF/Tax payers to fund you. A great example of this is the CERN LHC project. I have read/contributed to one of the CS side project proposals, which proposed to build a large-scale network. The arguments made in that proposal really make sense even for a common man. Similarly, NASA hypes up some of the space findings to get the general public interested.
I would say make better arguments, write better proposals and make the common man feel like they need us.
To add to that, you can still do "where no one has gone before" experiments, you just have to cleverly gain support for them. Numerous professors are doing this already, and this is nothing new.
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