The word "basic" is often misused, but its most straightforward meaning is to denote something that lies at the bottom of other things, causally speaking. Without basic math, you can't do calculus. Without basic English, you can't make head or tail of Milton's Paradise Lost (and maybe not even with it). Modern science-based (there's that word again) engineering depends on science in manifold ways: not just to provide the physical understanding of the materials and processes that engineers work with, but sometimes to give inspiration to novel ideas as well.
When the word "basic" is applied to science, we get one of a pair of phrases that are often used to emphasize a contrast, namely basic versus applied science. J. Britt Holbook is a philosopher with an appointment in the Department of Humanities at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. In a new collection of papers on science, technology, and society, he muses on the contrast between basic and applied science, and asks what role the state should play in supporting either one, both, or perhaps neither.
In the beginning, there was no state support of science, or as it was called then, natural philosophy. Philosophers had to make a living in some practical arena (Socrates was reportedly a stone-carver), and do philosophy in their spare time. A few managed to become teachers of philosophy, but still, one could not expect to earn a government salary by just thinking about the stars. Your lectures had to attract enough students to pay the rent.
It was in nineteenth-century Germany that the state began to realize that supporting science scholarship might actually benefit not only the scientists, but society at large. Holbrook cites the great Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) as one of the main early proponents of such support. What Humboldt wanted the state to support was not what we would call science, narrowly defined. Rather, it was the entire range of disciplines worthy of graduate study by both professors and their students, who would not only acquire what the professors had to pass on to them, but would discover new knowledge as well. This included what we would call social and even moral sciences as well as the natural sciences. And by 1870 or so, several German universities managed to put Humboldt's vision into action, and put Germany in the lead of what the Germans called Wissenschaft.
When we in the U. S. tried to import this pattern, we put our own twist on it, a notably practical one. The birth of "big science," funded at huge levels by focused government programs, took place during World War II, largely overseen by Vannevar Bush, who directed the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) during the war. While the OSRD's most historic product was the nuclear bomb, it also established precedents of funding levels that Bush attempted to maintain after the war. Although the ensuing National Science Foundation, founded in 1950, was not exactly what Bush had in mind, it embodied elements of both Bush's ideas and Humboldt's notion that supporting scientists to investigate knowledge for knowledge's sake alone would benefit society both directly, in terms of new applications of science via engineering, and indirectly, by raising the tone of the educated populace in general.
In the following decades, Holbrook notes that the NSF has steered ever closer to the applied, technological, or engineering side of things. In 2022, the agency formed its first new directorate in thirty years. The Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships Directorate will further emphasize research focused on practical applications and technology transfer to industry. This is only the most recent move in a long-established trend which some observers see as betraying the NSF's original purpose of funding research without regard to its possible future applications.
Holbrook sees a real danger in allowing public needs, as perceived by the government, to dictate the direction of science research. Toward the end of his article, he says " . . . we run the risk that whatever intellectual activity we argue the state should support will be reduced to a mere means to satisfy the desires of the state. There is no surer way to guarantee an absolutist state than to give in to the idea that all 'science' should support the needs of the state as defined by the state."
From my own worm's-eye view of university-based research, I have seen the NSF move from a position in which the technical science content of a proposal was almost all that mattered, to a position in which one's political credentials and even sex and race have a significant effect on the chances of getting funded. While Holbrook did not directly address these issues, they are a part of the shift he is criticizing.
Humboldt's original vision was broader than just funding a technological arms race between countries (i. e. the U. S. versus China) or even providing the direct benefits that new scientific knowledge conveys by means of development in technology and engineering. He had what may now sound like an old-fashioned and even naive trust that more knowledge will lead to an enlightened public and an atmosphere more favorable to human flourishing.
Although Holbrook didn't point this out, Humboldt's idea approaches Plato's notion that evil is simply the result of ignorance. That is why Plato's ideal government would be put in charge of a philosopher-king, because the philosophers know more than anyone else and therefore have the best chance at being good.
I think the public's recent experience with scientific expertise during COVID-19 showed that scientists, far from being the most moral people of all, have flaws just like the rest of us do. I agree with Holbrook that putting blinders on scientists and making them study only things of direct interest to the state is liable to cripple both science and the engineering on which it depends. I believe we have strayed much too far from the seldom-realized ideal of paying scientists to study whatever interests them, whether we can imagine a payday resulting from their efforts or not. But on the other hand, we shouldn't expect their discoveries to make us better people. That's not their job. That's up to us, to do with whatever natural and supernatural help we can find.
Sources: J. Britt Holbrook's essay "An Effective History of the Basic-Applied Distinction in 'Science' Policy" appears on pp. 483-497 of G. Miller, H. M. Jerónimo, and Qin Zhu, Thinking Through Science and Technology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023).
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