Why Science?

Our society makes a large investment in research and education because providing a smart workforce with knowledge and tools leads to a better quality of life. But that isn’t necessarily why individuals become scientists. Individual scientists are often motivated by pursuing questions that they find interesting. Is the disconnect between why society funds science, and why individuals do science, a problem?

There was a recent discussion at RMBL on “Climate Gate”, a controversy surrounding leaked emails in which scientists discussed the use of statistical “tricks” to convince the general public that carbon emissions from humans is causing an increase in world-wide temperatures. The discussion covered a wide range of topics, including how to talk about uncertainty, whether science is effectively being taught in high schools, and the responsibility scientists have to communicate to the larger world. The point was that made that scientists are funded by the public for the public good, so it puts a burden on scientists to establish the relevance of their work. That is a bit of a conundrum because it is really hard to link many scientific studies to a particular larger benefit. Simply stating that scientists are contributing to a larger body of knowledge, and that you never know when a fact will be useful, is unsatisfying.

The conversation then took an interesting twist and the relationship between art and science was raised. If people can pursue art because they have a beautiful idea, is it legitimate for scientists to pursue knowledge because of their personal aesthetic tastes?

My original scientific training was in math and physics, where elegance is considered a fundamental part of the search for knowledge. My belief, really just a supposition, is that art and science are fundamentally about the search for truth and beauty. Good scientists are motivated by that search. As with all exploration and discovery, we do not know where any individual path will take us. Failure is a big part of what scientists do. But occasionally you turn the corner and you are the first to glimpse something new and exciting. Insights which are deeply satisfying almost always involve perceiving the world in a fundamentally different way and understanding connections which were previously obscure. Discovering such connections is often what allows us to make the world a better place. So in my experience, turning highly creative people loose on interesting problems has a high return on investment. Scientists will go in directions we cannot anticipate, and some will get lost. But if the path to knowledge was obvious, it wouldn’t be discovery. And if process of discovery wasn’t engaging, bright people wouldn’t do it.