"Sadly, the history of science in the twentieth century has led both scientists and the general public to value unity over diversity" I'm not that familiar wit

"Sadly, the history of science in the twentieth century has led both scientists and the general public to value unity over diversity" I'm not that familiar with the situation in the fields the author focuses on (chemistry and physics), but seems to me that in general the present-day funding climate strongly favours more applied research (the "diversity" in the author's classification) and can make it quite difficult to work on "unification".