THE SUPPORT OF BASIC RESEARCH 



unexpected and unpredictable usefulness — of new and funda- 

 mental knowledge that Crawford Greenewalt and other speak- 

 ers concluded that basic research findings almost always turn 

 out to be useful. Oppenheimer himself found two exceptions: 

 "I should think that as of today, Einstein's general theory of 

 relativity lias had few, it anv, practical consequences .... 

 Again, as far as I know, the analytical theory of numbers, as 

 such, has led to no practical consequences." The speakers 

 agreed, however, that "one must think hard and long to find 



o o 



examples like this." And even these may eventually turn out 

 to have practical consequences. 



Several of the industrial participants went beyond the 

 general social usefulness of new knowledge and the basic 

 research that produces it, to point out that industry profits 

 directly from participation in basic research. James Fisk urged 

 industry to engage in basic research in order better to be able to 

 understand basic findings wherever made and to appraise them 

 in terms of their usefulness to industry. William Baker devel- 

 oped the points that a knowledge of fundamental scientific 

 theory is necessary to guide practical research, and that such 

 knowledge extends the range of understanding and usefulness 

 of research findings, whether those findings are initially classed 

 as basic or applied. The same principles apply to government 

 laboratories. 



This, then, is one of the reasons for emphasizing basic 

 research: it brings understanding, and understanding is useful. 

 In fact, it has often been said that basic research is the most 

 practical kind of research. In the words of President Eisen- 

 hower, "achievements in basic research, adding as they do 

 to man's fundamental understanding, have a quality of uni- 

 versalis' that goes beyond any limited or local application [and] 

 eventually . . . benefit all mankind." If the nation and the 

 scientific community are not now devoting as much of their 



251 



