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For more than a half century, it has been an article of faith that science would not get funded if government did not do it, and economic growth would not happen if science did not get funded by the taxpayer. Now Matt Ridley writes in The Wall Street Journal that when you examine the history of innovation, you find, again and again, that scientific breakthroughs are the effect, not the cause, of technological change. "It is no accident that astronomy blossomed in the wake of the age of exploration," says Ridley. "The steam engine owed almost nothing to the science of thermodynamics, but the science of thermodynamics owed almost everything to the steam engine. The discovery of the structure of DNA depended heavily on X-ray crystallography of biological molecules, a technique developed in the wool industry to try to improve textiles." According to Ridley technological advances are driven by practical men who tinkered until they had better machines; abstract scientific rumination is the last thing they do.
It follows that there is less need for government to fund science: Industry will do this itself. Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them. Having invented the steam engine, it will pay for thermodynamics. After all, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. and Britain made huge contributions to science with negligible public funding, while Germany and France, with hefty public funding, achieved no greater results either in science or in economics. To most people, the argument for public funding of science rests on a list of the discoveries made with public funds, from the Internet (defense science in the U.S.) to the Higgs boson (particle physics at CERN in Switzerland). But that is highly misleading. Given that government has funded science munificently from its huge tax take, it would be odd if it had not found out something. This tells us nothing about what would have been discovered by alternative funding arrangements. "Governments cannot dictate either discovery or invention," concludes Ridley. "They can only make sure that they don't hinder it. Innovation emerges unbidden from the way that human beings freely interact if allowed. Deep scientific insights are the fruits that fall from the tree of technological change."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Francis on Friday October 30 2015, @11:39PM
Indeed. It is true that industry will fund a lot of science. However, that doesn't mean that we can just let industry fund it. There's things like space exploration that are just too costly for private industry to fund. The LHC was about 7,5bn Euro and there's only a small number of corporations that have the kind of money necessary to build that. None of which would build it as the research is so far removed from current application.
Verifying experimental data and experimentation is another one where government grants are helpful. It's relatively easy to get people on board with exciting new research, but not as much with research that's just replicating what other experiments have done to verify that they weren't a fluke.
That's not to say that we shouldn't be encouraging industry to engage in R&D and to do their own science, just that it's foolish to assume that they'll conduct all the research we need.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 31 2015, @12:38PM
You're aware we have several competing private space shot firms in existence at the moment, yes? Would they have come about without the prior government program? Who knows, but they can't simply be dismissed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday October 31 2015, @03:23PM
No, they wouldn't have. At bare minimum the risks involved with human space flight would have ensured that it never got started. As it stands they got to benefit from decades of space travel and the resultant disasters.
The problem they haven't isn't figuring out how to do it, the problem is figuring out how to take what's been done and make it economical. A much, much easier problem to solve. Businesses are great at finding ways to make money out of already existing ideas. It's just that they're really cruddy at inventing things like space travel.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 31 2015, @05:04PM
No, they wouldn't have. At bare minimum the risks involved with human space flight would have ensured that it never got started.
Yea, right. There's always been a vast amount of tolerance and acceptance for risk in space flight. For example, several private companies started with a significant failure rate. SpaceX is far from the first in this regard.
The problem they haven't isn't figuring out how to do it, the problem is figuring out how to take what's been done and make it economical. A much, much easier problem to solve.
Much easier than turning ridiculous sums of money into a few rockets? No way.
Businesses are great at finding ways to make money out of already existing ideas. It's just that they're really cruddy at inventing things like space travel.
If only there were actual supporting evidence for your assertion.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday October 31 2015, @06:04PM
I take it you haven't hard of OSHA or the various equivalents in other countries. The US and USSR were able to put people in space because military personnel don't have the same rights that the rest of us do.
Yes, it's easier to make it more cost effective than it is to make the first ones. Notice how this all started nearly 5 decades after the first rocket went into orbit? A lot of the things they're utilizing now weren't available previously, given sufficient time spent waiting for materials sciences to develop better materials, it's a lot easier.
Just look at the designs that are being used, they were impossible previously, but are much more realistic with the increased computational power of modern computers.
As far as evidence goes, are you blind? When is the last time you saw a business manage to make something like space travel from nothing? The only things I can recall are things like computers and those were done incrementally. They didn't have to poor billions of dollars into it in order to get a possible positive outcome. When IBM started messing around with computing technology decades ago, they knew what the purpose of the machines was, and they had an idea how to do it. They didn't have to skip straight to the laptop, they started with some very large mainframes with very slow processors and over the course of many years were able to get them smaller and smaller.
Obviously, it wasn't just IBM, but the same basic thing goes for the other companies engaged in developing computer technology.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 31 2015, @06:29PM
I take it you haven't hard of OSHA or the various equivalents in other countries. The US and USSR were able to put people in space because military personnel don't have the same rights that the rest of us do.
I like how the argument veered into the ditch here. Before you were speaking of risk. Now you speak of government's immunity to its own willful obstruction of progress. I guess that's the Mafia version of risk. Government involvement or something bad happens to your space development efforts.
The obvious rebuttal is that we could just not give government that kind of power over our lives.
Yes, it's easier to make it more cost effective than it is to make the first ones. Notice how this all started nearly 5 decades after the first rocket went into orbit? A lot of the things they're utilizing now weren't available previously, given sufficient time spent waiting for materials sciences to develop better materials, it's a lot easier.
Note that the key argument of the article was that most of this stuff would happen anyway. I believe that is the case here.
As far as evidence goes, are you blind? When is the last time you saw a business manage to make something like space travel from nothing? The only things I can recall are things like computers and those were done incrementally. They didn't have to poor billions of dollars into it in order to get a possible positive outcome. When IBM started messing around with computing technology decades ago, they knew what the purpose of the machines was, and they had an idea how to do it. They didn't have to skip straight to the laptop, they started with some very large mainframes with very slow processors and over the course of many years were able to get them smaller and smaller.
You just gave an example. AIncremental development works in space flight too. That's how they actually did it in the space programs and private contractor projects.