Abstract
The use of the phrase “basic research” as a term used in science policy discussion dates only to about 1920. At the time the phrase referred to what we today commonly refer to as applied research in support of specific missions or goals, especially agriculture. Upon the publication of Vannevar Bush’s well-known report, Science – The Endless Frontier, the phrase “basic research” became a key political symbol, representing various identifications, expectations and demands related to science policy among scientists and politicians. This paper tracks and evaluates the evolution of “basic research” as a political symbol from early in the 20th century to the present. With considerable attention having been paid to the on-going evolution of post-Cold War science policy, much less attention has focused on the factors which have shaped the dominant narrative of contemporary science policies.
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Notes
The sources for the media, Congressional and scientific publications cited here are discussed in the text below.
Polanyi did not actually use the phrase.
Available at: https://web.lexis-nexis.com/congcomp. The database is available on a subscription basis and was accessed via the University of Colorado. Data collection was performed by Sarah Leshan and Zach Johnson, who also performed the searches discussed below.
That said, the scientific community was to some degree a global community even then, and ideas and arguments quickly crossed the Atlantic in both directions.
Godin (2009) cites several other examples of similar arguments for the practical importance of “pure research,” none of which used the phrase “basic research.”
This view was widely shared at the time. Kline (1995) quotes astrophysicist George Elery Hale writing in Science in 1914 on this point, “we must show how the investigations of Faraday, pursued for the pure love of truth and apparently of no commercial value, nevertheless laid the foundations of electrical engineering. If we can disseminate such knowledge…we can multiply the friends of pure science and secure new and large endowments for physics, chemistry and other fundamental subjects.” Almost 100 years later, Faraday remains a trusted anecdote in science policy discussions.
Comment of Sir A. Daniel Hall, FRS, upon the occasion of a member of the NUSW, W. B. Brierley of the Department of Mycology at Rothamstead, visiting the United States (The Scientific Worker 1921).
Kline (1995, p. 205): “The wartime discourse pitted those who preached the new ‘gospel of industrial research,’ nurtured by Arthur Little and others in the chemists' crusade, against adherents of the older ‘gospel of high culture and pure science.’”
On the influence of The Country Gentleman, see Pursell (1968).
Kline attributes the popularization of the term “basic research” in the mid-1920s to Arthur Kennelly. Based on the analysis that I present here, Kennelly’s use of the phrase is to be viewed as part of the broader expansion in use as it gained in symbolic importance. See Kennelly (1926). Of note, Vannevar Bush was a student of Kennelly’s and in the 1940s claimed credit for coining the phrase (according to Kline 1995). Bush’s claim is clearly incorrect. Success has many parents.
An interesting side note: Wallace’s father, Henry C. Wallace, was the Secretary of Agriculture in the early 1920s and oversaw the report of the USDA from which the New York Times distilled the phrase “basic research.” If the phrase “basic research” can be traced to any one individual, Henry C. Wallace is a leading candidate.
In this case, “over long periods the contributions of technologic change and other causes of growth– such as worker skills, capital deepening, and institutional change—are highly interactive and difficult to separate” (National Research Council 2007).
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Warwick University Modern Records Centre, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Oxford, The Royal Society, and for research and publication support Zachary Johnson, Sarah Leshan, Ami Nacu-Schmidt, Sara Ward and Elizabeth Hall. This work was supported the US National Science Foundation’s program on Science of Science and Innovation Policy.
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Pielke, R. Basic Research as a Political Symbol. Minerva 50, 339–361 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-012-9207-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-012-9207-5