Mark Dodgson*, 5 December 2024
In the not too dim, distant past, American Presidents could inspire by referring to the best, rather than the worst, of humanity.
On September 12th, 1962, John F. Kennedy gave a famous speech that has the memorable line about why humans aspire to go to the moon, and solve other technological challenges, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
In the speech, he cites William Bradford, a Puritan who sailed on the Mayflower, who wrote in 1630 that “all great and honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.”
To the virtues of honour, initiative, and courage necessary for technological innovations, Kennedy adds determination, choice, and understanding. These, he says, lead to enrichment of new knowledge, new techniques of learning, mapping and observation, and new tools and computers.
Kennedy’s speech captures the essential inspiration that underlines the connection of human ambition with scientific and technological possibilities. He appreciated the pursuit of challenging scientific and technological problems is one of humankind’s most noble characteristics.
It is salutary to reflect on the contrast between these soaring sentiments and the pallid, instrumental discussion that typifies much of today’s debate on the purpose and nature of science and R&D. Much of today’s discussion around the world is framed in terms of ‘value for money’, ‘creating new industries’, and ‘stimulating business investment’.
Witness the statement from Australia’s Minister for Industry and Science on the purpose of the forthcoming Strategic Examination of R&D, with its aim to “determine how we can get more value for every taxpayer dollar invested in research, maximise the contribution of science and R&D to the broader economy, and maintain our competitive edge”.[1]
Such a view sets the tone for the Examination. Kennedy-like it is not, its language is as deadening as his was uplifting, and it is more relevant and appealing to bean counters than the scientists and technologists who will create Australia’s future.
In all the discussions about R&D priorities and institutional arrangements and budget allocations it is crucially important not to lose sight of what really matters: the human motivations behind science, research, and innovation. Scientific advance is a story of wonder, perseverance in the face of inevitable failures and set-backs, and intellectual effort and ambition directed at solving difficult problems.
Research offers an antidote to scientific scepticism, parochialism, and insularity; its origins and progress are typified by internationalism and institutions with long-term orientations preparing for a world decades ahead.
In essence, looking beyond the soul-destroying barrenness of much of the current preoccupations around its assessment, and the narrowness of its vision, research is evidence of humanity at its best. The greatest innovations of benefit to humankind did not emerge pre-planned, ‘determined’, and ‘maximised’, but from the virtues described by Kennedy and which are allergic to spread sheets. The greatest discoveries and innovations occur when people are inspired to look to the stars.
If the interest really lies with understanding the forces that will determine Australia’s future, let’s have a lot less fanciful concern with ‘competitive edges’, and a lot more on understanding and encouraging motivating forces such as human curiosity. As the great sociologist, Max Weber, pointed out, the motivations of scientists and technologists are often multiple, but not usually instrumental.
Take curiosity: it’s an intrinsic feature of humanity, a key motivator for many scientists and engineers, and a major stimulus to the accumulation of knowledge. Curiosity is fed by the ability to see, notice, question, and seek answers to what works and what doesn’t and why things succeed and importantly why they fail, and it is endless and constantly and completely renewable.
Neuroscientists argue curiosity is a basic and pervasive element of human nature, and it underpins the motivations of great scientists. Hans Bethe, for example, said humankind has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world, a compulsion to understand; Linus Pauling said: “satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life”; and Einstein said he was driven by passionate curiosity.
Whether it is directed at the most basic of scientific questions – what Einstein called the holy curiosity of inquiry – or to the challenges faced by engineers – who Einstein called the architects of progress – science, research and innovation are driven by curiosity. It’s not just scientists who think this way. As Steve Jobs put it: “An engineer’s mind is a playground of innovation, where curiosity is the driving force.”
Of course institutions, budgets, and priorities matter, and there is a pressing need to sort out the aimless, messy, policy kaleidoscope of the current situation in Australia.[2] But the rampant and stifling instrumentalism of the debate has to move beyond the prosaic and remember the poetic, the beauty of discovery and intense personal satisfaction in problem-solving. It has to appreciate the reasons why humankind is curious, how that curiosity is stimulated, directed, and appreciated, and its beneficial consequences.
Having been involved in two previous Australian national reviews of this nature, I wish the panel conducting the Examination every success: what it and its Secretariat aim to do is important. But I hope it can move beyond the management-speak word salad in its Terms of Reference, to wit, for example: ‘global powerhouse’, ‘maximise the value’, ‘add value and compete’, ‘drive greater’, ‘leverage’, and ‘harness and grow’.
I trust it can circumvent this language more appropriate in an investment prospectus for a shaky start-up, and capture the essence of the words used so inspirationally and appropriately by Kennedy, such as honour, courage, determination, choice, understanding, and initiative.
Practically, this means listening a little less to the R&D special interest groups queuing up to promote their agendas, and more to efforts in primary and secondary schools to encourage children to think, question, and strive for answers.
It means less time on economic models based on absurd assumptions producing inevitably far-fetched rates of return, and more accepting that progress is untidy and failure is both unpredictable and inevitable and something to be factored into broad portfolios of investments.
It means less preoccupation with ‘missions’, and greater balance along the Haldane Principle that decisions on individual research proposals are best taken by researchers themselves.
And hopefully it means that this review will not ignore the splendour and majesty of unencumbered human inquisitiveness, the important learning that accompanies failure, and the virtue, when it comes down to it, of just letting smart and talented people get on with it.
* Mark Dodgson AO is Emeritus Professor, University of Queensland; Visiting Professor, Imperial College London; and Executive-in-Residence, University of Oxford. His most recent research is on Covid vaccines and the development of viable energy from nuclear fusion.
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