Comment by pfdietz
1 day ago
But often it is like that. I point to the US before WW2, and China more recently. Scientific spending seems a consequence of economic dominance, not a cause. It's a kind of potlatch, a demonstration that the society has the money to burn for a status activity.
Science has more value than just economic value. But I think it’s rather obvious that a lot of large European and American industries exist largely as a result of scientific and military spending. Boeing and Airbus are the examples that spring to mind. China is still quite a long way from competing with either, and it’s not for want of smart people or general manufacturing expertise.
That sounds more like applied science in support of specific (and large scale) development activities. That can't be used as a justification for science of any kind, and not as justification for pure science. To do otherwise is to engage in a kind of cargo cult reasoning, confusing correlation with causation.
I don’t think basic scientific research needs to be justified by narrow economic considerations as it has inherent value. But it’s a commonplace observation that you can’t predict what kinds of scientific research will or won’t have practical applications within a given time frame. Computer science started out as an extremely esoteric branch of pure math.
2 replies →