PURE SCIENCE AND THE IDEA OF THE HOLY 



are always too mixed. There is really only science with long-term 

 promise of applications and science with short-term promise of 

 applications. True knowledge of nature emerges from both kinds 

 of science. 



A few words may be added about the planning of scientific research. 

 Polanyi, and Baker (in The Scientific Life)^ with their individualist 

 bias against the modern trend towards more adequate planning, go 

 about to alarm us of the evils of an excess of it. They would have us 

 believe that planning is not compatible with "pure," though it may 

 be with "applied," science. But the positive advantages of planning 

 are agreed to upon all sides; it is essentially only an extension of 

 broadly-conceived research programs such as already exist, it is 

 necessitated by that ever-increasing complexity of research which 

 demands collaborative methods, and it will facilitate the interrelations 

 of specialised workers. The kernel of truth in the protests of Baker 

 and Polanyi is that scientific discovery partakes of the nature of the 

 creative arts, and that scientists can not guarantee to produce results 

 to a timetable. Russians, however, are not often accused of lack of 

 understanding of art and artists. Their scientific planning has indeed, 

 for the most part, been broadly conceived. Moreover, it ill becomes 

 the capitalist countries to criticise any growing pains of socialist 

 planning, for the pressure on the young scientific worker to produce 

 results at all costs has nowhere been more acute than in some American 

 institutions, and is far from unknown in England. 



Pure Science and Philosophy 



Or again, it may be held that scientific research can only be pure 

 when it is conducted in an atmosphere unpolluted by any particular 

 philosophy. That the influence of an official state world-outlook, 

 philosophy, or set of theories can be catastrophically bad for science 

 is seen from the condition of science under nazism and fascism. The 

 principle of "race-conditioning" of scientific thought has led to an 

 infinity of absurdities in the German literature, and to a substantial 

 fall in productivity in many branches of science, both in bulk and 

 quality, by the exiling of many of the most distinguished German 

 scientists. But Soviet Russia also has a philosophy accepted by the 

 dominant party in the state, that of marxist dialectical materialism. On 

 the value of this to science, opinions differ. Polanyi and a number 

 of other British scientists dismiss it as nonsense, though never clearly 

 stating their objections to it. Some of us, on the other hand, in growing 



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