Biology Reference
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the public good. But the journey of science does not move in concert with
such public motives; it is likely to be derailed when it depends too much
on such limited justifications. Ronald Tobey has illustrated this dilemma
in a fascinating study of scientific patronage in the decades between the
world wars.
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In spite of their first organized campaign to deepen public
support for basic research, U.S. scientists failed, as they consistently had
up until this time, simply because the American public was so deeply wed-
ded to pragmatism. Basic science is not pragmatic, and it progresses most
effectively when it is free to pursue the sorts of questions that offer the most
promise of giving up answers—not when it pursues commercial or military
payoffs. Pure research was a hard sell in a country that regarded Thomas
Edison as its greatest scientist. Basic research in the world's most affluent
nation lagged far behind that in much smaller countries like Germany,
France, and England. This changed considerably after the Second World
War when the advent of the atom bomb fused basic science with pragma-
tism in the American consciousness, but science has remained particularly
vulnerable to the volatilities of a public mind that still doubts the worth of
science for science's sake.
Alexis de Tocqueville had predicted as much when the French govern-
ment sent him to the United States in 1831 to study the U.S. prison system.
Theoretical science required a reflective frame of mind that our democratic
culture was unlikely to foster. In a country where everyone “is in motion:
some in quest of power, others of gain,” there would be little time for con-
templation, and little value would be attached to the pursuit of knowledge
that was not also the pursuit of power or gain.
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How Tocqueville explained
France's stronger tradition of scientific patronage is particularly notable.
He thought that science had continued to prosper in his native country, in
the aftermath of its own move toward democracy, because certain residues
of the older feudal world still persisted in its cultural psyche. The French
historian does not say what aspects of the
ancien régime
these were, but from
his emphasis on the value of contemplation as a necessary condition for
prospering basic science, we might surmise that he had in mind science's
share in the religious ethos of his society.
If science finds a personal motive in its association with things tran-
scendent, it may find an ideal public motive here as well. When science is
connected to religion, it also becomes an instrument for the achievement of
spiritual purposes, and spiritual purposes supersede the practical and mate-
rial ones that scientific patronage might otherwise depend upon. When sci-
ence has religious meaning, it will be valued for its own sake, and I believe
