The differences in relative growth of various areas of scientific research have several causes. (1)Some of these causes are completely reasonable results of social needs. Others are reasonable consequences of particular advances in science being to some extent self-accelerating. Some, however, are less reasonable processes of different growth in which preconceptions of the form scientific theory ought to take, by persons in authority, act to alter the growth pattern of different areas. This is a new problem probably not yet unavoidable; but it is a frightening trend. (2)This trend began during the Second World War, when several governments came to the conclusion that the specific demands that a government wants to make of its scientific establishment cannot generally be foreseen in detail. It can be predicted, however, that from time to time questions will arise which will require specific scientific answers. It is therefore generally valuable to treat the scientific establishment as a resource or machine to be kept in functional order. (3)This seems mostly effectively done by supporting a certain amount of research not related to immediate goals but of possible consequence in the future.
This kind of support, like all government support, requires decisions about the appropriate recipients of funds. Decisions based on utility as opposed to lack of utility are straightforward. But a decision among projects none of which has immediate utility is more difficult. The goal of the supporting agencies is the praisable one of supporting "good" as opposed to "bad" science, but a valid determination is difficult to make. Generally, the idea of good science tends to become confused with the capacity of the field in question to generate an elegant theory. (4)However, the world is so made that elegant systems are in principle unable to deal with some of the world's more fascinating and delightful aspects. (5) New forms of thought as well as new subjects for thought must arise in the future as they have in the past, giving rise to new standards of elegance.
They were, by far, the largest and most distant objects that scientists had ever detected: a strip of enormous cosmic clouds some 15 billion light-years from earth. (1)But even more important, it was the farthest that scientists had been able to look into the past, for what they were seeing were the patterns and structures that existed 15 billion years ago. That was just about the moment that the universe was born. What the researchers found was at once bo...[
查看详情]
