PREFACE 



dividuals educated here, but rather bv scholars in and of other countries. 

 Indeed, after the war it was often said that while we are clever and 

 energetic about exploiting ideas, we have not seemed equally effective 

 in the discovery of new knowledge and in the production of imaginative 

 new ideas. 



Strong evidence has been accumulating that we are in fact capable 

 of creating new knowledge. But in spite of our verbal dedication to the 

 importance of basic research, and in spite of our emerging confidence 

 that we have the national resources of imaginative, competent, and 

 dedicated individuals to carry out basic research, it nevertheless remains 

 true that as a nation, we are not giving adequate and suitable suvvort 

 to basic research. Consider the following questions: 



i. Is not the large support of applied research, and still more par- 

 ticularly the massive present support of development, in un- 

 healthy relation to the meager support for basic research? 



2. Is it not true that industry pays eager lip service to basic re- 

 search, but in actual fact does not give adequate support to basic 

 research, either within industry or elsewhere? 



3. Has either industry or government learned how to protect basic 

 research from the insistent demands of applied research and de- 

 velopment? 



4. Are not universities so deeply invaded by the demands for solv- 

 ing immediate problems and by the temptation of income for so 

 doing, that there are all too few cases of competent scholars 

 pondering about problems simply because it interests them to 

 do so? Is there not a real danger that the scholars in our univer- 

 sities will lose — and indeed have alreadv partly lost — the "ma- 

 neuvering room for their continuing reanalysis of the universe?" 



5. Has it been effectively accepted in our country that the spirit 

 of basic research is an essential ingredient of the educational 

 process — and that this fact should affect educational procedures 

 at all levels? 



The difficulty is not a simple one of fiscal arithmetic. More funds 

 for basic research are indeed required: but of even greater importance 

 is the way in which basic research funds are made available — the flexi- 

 bility, the stability, the freedom from intellectually dishonest commit- 

 ment, with which competent scholarship should be supported. 



xiv 



