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It is deeply disturbing article, down to the point where it looks like an attack on fundamental science. Without science providing the explanation how all the
by AnonNo15 11y ago
It is deeply disturbing article, down to the point where it looks like an attack on fundamental science.
Without science providing the explanation how all the fancy technology works, inventors would be blind and deaf.
For example - how can you make an accurate GPS without understanding relativity? How one can make a CPU without science of solid state physics? A computer network without information theory?
The better explanation would that fundamental science research gives a foundation for the future progress, in both applied science and technology. Those next steps can happen sometimes much, much later so the science behind it appears to be disconnected or a completely mundane knowledge by that time.
- api 11y agoI found it disturbing for another reason too: the outright attack on the uniqueness and value of individual thought. Yes, several people invented light bulbs. When something is a good idea many people will see that and produce variations on it. But that doesn't mean you can factor out initiative and individual genius. It just means that lots of people possess those virtues and that sometimes great minds do think alike. The author of this piece seems to want to abstract us all into a giant seething heap of flesh whose writhing produces some kind of inexorable motion like the way molecules banging around produce pressure from a confined gas. I don't think it follows. Elsewhere someone wrote that this seems to be a British political hit piece on science funding. Figures.