74 Research and National Purpose 



There has been much public debate about 

 Priorities in priorities in science these past few years, par- 



Scientific Work ticularly these past three or four years, and 



a considerable intellectual effort has been 

 made in different countries to agree on the principles which 

 should dictate the proportion of public expenditure which 

 should go first to the whole of research and development, 

 second, to basic as opposed to "mission-orientated" or applied 

 research — which some have aptly differentiated as curiosity- 

 directed as opposed to need-directed research — and, third, to 

 separate fields of science. We are still far from agreement on 

 any of these matters. I myself am somewhat skeptical about our 

 chances of ever finding a set of universal principles which will 

 tell us how much support pure research should receive, 

 whether we accept as a working assumption that the cultiva- 

 tion of basic science should be regarded as an "overhead" cost 

 to the economic exploitation of scientific knowledge in general, 

 whether it is something which should be supported as one of 

 man's cultural activities, or whether the justification is a mix- 

 ture of both these propositions.^ 



This particular issue is, however, not one which I need 

 explore on this occasion. But the question of how priorities 

 are to be decided within the budget which is set for us is im- 

 portant to my theme of the conditions for scientific progiess. 



The problem is clearly not the same in the 

 Priorities in open world of basic research as it is in the 



Basic Research more secret, even if wider, world in which 



applied science and development flourish. 

 Some might suppose that because certain areas of basic science 

 look as though they will pay off better and sooner than others, 

 any good administrator could decide how much support to 

 give different fields of basic science. That is not my view. I 



4. Toulmin, Stephen (1966). The Complexity of Scientific Choice 11: Culture, 

 Overheads or Tertiary Industry? Minerva, Vol. 4, p. 155. Basic Research and 

 National Goals: A Report to the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. 

 House of Representatives, by the National Academy of Sciences (1965) Wash- 

 ington. U.S. Government Printing Office. 



