The position of the natural sciences in Western society today is something of a paradox. By many standards, science in the U.S. and Europe has been enjoying a renaissance since World War II that has only accelerated in recent years. Governments have been devoting millions of dollars annually to basic research. Additionally, many firms in science or sectors of the economy related to science have maintained robust Research and Development divisions. These organizations have helped to set and pursue national priorities. As a result of this funding and direction, researchers have achieved major advances in a great diversity of fields and continue to publish new results at an astonishing pace.
However, a more critical examination of scientific research in the West yields a number of troubling observations. Scientists in most fields overwhelmingly clamor for more funding, claiming that governments currently give them only a small fraction of what they’d require to meet their research goals. Governments also continue to allocate a disproportionate amount of science funding toward military projects. Much of the rest is directed toward facilitating economic and business activity by developing new consumer goods or improving communications and transportation infrastructure. Basic research in fundamental fields such as biology, chemistry or physics is starved. Finally, nonscientific professionals and consumers apply the results of scientific advancements in a distressingly haphazard manner with little concern for destructive consequences. Scientists often find their warnings of the dire outcomes brought by misapplying their research ignored by governments and the general public.
Those searching for the causes of these inadequacies and inefficiencies in the conduct of scientific research in the West find a possible answer in the work of the great British physicist John Desmond Bernal. A devoted Marxist and member of Britain’s Communist party, Bernal also wrote extensively of the relation between science and society in capitalist and socialist states. Under capitalism, Bernal argues that scientific research is diverted from its proper goals of improving our knowledge of the universe and the quality of human life, instead focusing on the maximization of profits for corporate sources of funding and destructive power of military machines for military and political ones. He also contends that modern science and technology have become so complex and powerful that they will completely transform humanity and the world. Under the laissez-faire mentality of capitalist governments, he fears that the forces of science will manifest themselves in a chaotic and destructive manner. Without a central organization to manage the development and restrain the use of new scientific information, Bernal foresees a future in which mankind gradually extinguishes itself though wars, irresponsible biological experimentation and environmental devastation.
While Bernal did view the USSR’s government as more amenable to scientific research than England’s or the U.S.’s (mostly because of its greater commitment to state-based funding and organization of research), he recognized that contemporary state socialism would not eliminate most of the problems he saw with science. Instead, he advocated a modified Marxism under which scientists themselves took a commanding role in government and economics. Bernal thought that only a body of scientific experts could understand the complex scientific problems that would increasingly determine the fate of human societies. These panels would establish priorities for scientific researchers in any one state, allocate funding among different projects and set state policies and regulations dealing with scientific or technological issues. Most importantly, they would make their decisions independently of other branches of government or wealthy private interests that currently distort science policy.
For most practical purposes, Bernal’s “scientific corporations” are simply more autonomous versions of contemporary government programs like the NSF. While Westerners are justifiably suspicious of concentrating policy-making power in unelected bodies, one wonders how the transformation of existing government research agencies into the independent bodies Bernal describes would change the institution of science. If scientists exerted the formative influence over nations’ science policy, would governments continue to indulge military and corporate R&D at the expense of basic research? More importantly, would they still so blatantly ignore the scientific community’s desperate pleas for action on climate change, the destabilizing pollution of a variety of ecosystems, the proliferation of increasingly devastating weapons, and many other pressing issues? Like all questions in science, these can only be answered by experiment.
Sam Chirtel is a junior Biophysics major from Springfield, Va.
