The Freedom of Science

During the past few days many statements have been current about the importance, for material well-being, of the organized direction of science in the future. Various schemes have appeared for organizing research and directing the men of science. Everyone acknowledges the importance of employing science to improve material conditions; but at the same time one rarely hears of the importance of science as a branch of general culture — or considered as natural philosophy.

While it seems plain that the faculties of science in our universities stand in need of a greater measure of assistance, the reason that commonly spoils the case for supplying them with this assistance is that they are the training ground of the technicians of the future. But the universities are the places that ought to allow men chosen with care the time and the fitting circumstances to satisfy in freedom that lofty curiosity about the workings of nature — the work that created for us Newton and Faraday — and to hold up to young men ideals other than mere refrigerating machines of larger size and better make.

It is true that Newton and Faraday devoted some of their time to practical problems; but the glory of British science in the eyes of the world — and reputation is a material asset — would not have been lessened had Newton made no contribution to the improvement of the coinage, or Faraday to the production of steel...

As it happened, most of the great industrial developments to which science has contributed, if not all of them, appeared in the course of idealistic researches pursued for the sake of knowledge alone. It was Clerk Maxwell's researches into the nature of light that guided us to wireless communication; J. J. Thomson's researches on the electron led us to the various great branches of the electrical industry; and it was Rutherford's interest in radioactivity that brought us in the end to the release of atomic energy. No one can say what we stand to gain from allowing certain men to think and to carry out experiments as their own minds prompt them. And even if no great material profit could result from the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake alone, science must still be granted a large measure of freedom without direction.

We admit that the drawing of plans cannot be dispensed with, and that there must be a great body, comprising able men of science and some men of government and industry, working to improve the conditions of living, of trade, and of exports. But in any case, full esteem must not be confined to those painters who are employed only in coating iron against rust, those musicians whose playing has no aim higher than reviving the exhausted workers of the factories, and those philosophers who cannot entertain the crowds over the wireless; there must be the same esteem also for the thinkers and the workers in science whose concern is not confined to the improvement, early or late, of the material side of things.