DECLINE OF SCIENCE?
Who does not know about the desperate situation of Ukrainian scientific research? Who has not read newspaper articles by indignant scientists appealing and complaining to the state? Everybody does and has. The man in the street is puzzled. Why? As we were made to believe that, science is turning into a direct force of production, and the world is full of talk about hi-tech products. What is our state doing? Why is it cutting research?
Science experts claim that all global research as such is in the grip of a serious functional crisis. The social prestige of research is on the wane. The taxpayer’s imagination conjures up, not without the efforts of counterculture activists and greens, the picture of science as a costly and dangerous socioeconomic subsystem which promises dividends in the distant future if at all. But today’s individual does not want to wait. And, in general, the pragmatic function of science prevails today over the cognitive one in the developed communities. On the level of research policies, this is revealed in the generous funding of only those programs that promise fast profits. Topping the list are, of course, computer technologies. The scientific outlook is degrading. That the press is flooded with “irrational trash,” much to the chagrin of our disseminators of things rational and eternal, is also a worldwide trend. The popularity of sorcerers, necromancers, psychics, and other characters of this kind rises in civilized countries with each passing year. There are more full-time astrologers than professional physicists in California, the alma mater of Silicon Valley.
WHAT DOES THE SCIENTIST WANT?
What is the state doing? I think it doing what it should. And it is high time the man in the street understood that all talk about scientific research is heavily seasoned with myth and not without the effort of the scientists themselves. A well-known joke illustrates very well the motivations behind their studies. A top-security company has cut salaries to its research associates. But they still show up. Another cut, and they still come. The bosses stopped paying altogether, but the employees still came. Then the bosses began to think whether to introduce admission cards. Note that a joke like this can never be devised about coal miners. The same idea runs through the aphorism by a well-known (in the past) physicist and honest man Lev Artsymovych, “Research is the best way to satisfy one’s curiosity at the state’s expense.” We can add today at the taxpayer’s expense.
It is this specific of scientific research that newspapers never write about. It is clear why scientists do not write, although they know the score very well. Incidentally, if some of them do not know or do not agree with Artsymovych, they are doing the wrong job and should quit the field of research. As to journalists, they do not write because they, like the man in the street, are under a delusion about science. It seems to them the only thing scientists do is to try to think up ways to gratify humanity with new technological breakthroughs.
A passion for knowledge is not just related to the strongest human passion but is of the same nature. “Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bore Cain” (Genesis, 4:1). “And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bore Enoch” (Genesis, 4:17). And so on up to now. The whole history of humanity is that of knowing Nature and Woman, which is basically the same thing. Jean Rostand, being quite frank, said precisely, “The researcher’s passion is to lift up Nature’s skirts and discover the wonders concealed underneath ...” But we still keep on muttering about scientific and technological progress. Progress is, of course, a good thing. But its motive forces are both obvious and mysterious. Sigmund Freud put the mysterious forces first. He thought up the idea of sublimation, meaning that a select few find a more dignified application for the ever-present libido: instead of using it for its immediate purpose, i.e., lifting up skirts, as most would, they desire to create pieces of science and art.
Forget Freud: even the pagan Plato knew this. In his famous Banquet he described the way of love or the ascension from Earth to Heaven. Here is how: from lust for a beautiful body through to the knowledge of the beauty of mores and customs, of the beauty of sciences, and to the final point: the Beautiful as such. Not everyone can reach the point of destination: the lower the level, the more people get stuck there. Human beings are led down this road by the genius of Eros. This road of Love to Knowledge is a road to immortality. A person cannot resign himself to his mortal nature. On earth, he tries to overcome it by scattering his genes, i.e., by procreation, and on heaven by associating himself with eternal ideas.
WHAT DOES THE BOSS WANT?
Let us return for the time being to more prosaic things. Scientific research is self-sufficient and rewarding in itself. It serves nothing but itself. Unaware of this is now a legion of bosses thirsty for degrees and titles. A mediocrity can now become a doctor, let alone a master, of sciences. But let us recall the very beginning. Degrees were once instituted for scientists and scholars. Some of them grabbed a degree very fast, others dragged their feet, saying: why should I distract myself and waste time on red tape? The director of a certain research institute begged his young colleagues to win degrees, threatening to resort to administrative reprisals. Moreover, he took one of the most talented and recalcitrant by hand and said to the guard, “Don’t let this one in until I tell you to.” That meant until he defended the dissertation. Those were the days.
A researcher and a boss seem to be people with different heads. They understand many things, especially research, in a different way. A boss looks on science as a powerful instrument for fulfilling economic tasks, while a researcher — recall Lev Artsymovych’s utterance. Thus bosses, with strategic objectives in view, unveil a new research institute in hope that the tasks will be successfully fulfilled. But they will remain unfulfilled for some reason. The bosses are surprised, indignant, and try to exercise control by introducing various criteria of effectiveness, for example, return per ruble invested (I really do not know if it is now per hryvnia). This was the way the bosses reaped the fruits of their generosity. Deluded by science in the times of the Bomb and the Missile, they were generous indeed. “These boys slaved away in their basements, and then it banged in the dessert ‘brighter than a thousand suns.’ If you give them money, they’ll come up with something even smarter.” This was approximately the “correct” logic of the bosses. The boys slaved away in their barn, and what interested them most was whether or not this gadget would fly. It did after all although there were repeated on the ground explosions that would tear apart the most curious. It is common knowledge what it all came to. However, failures also happen. For more than fifty years, physicists of the world have been milking their governments, promising to harness thermonuclear fusion. Nosing out and cheering up.
Yes, the Bomb and the Missile made it. Ninety percent of all research institutions throughout Soviet history were opened in the sixties. The deluded masses rushed in. Every other schoolboy wanted to become a scientist or a cosmonaut. The “physicists” successfully outdid the “lyricists.” Their soul-searching in the film Nine Days of One Year struck a nationwide chord. A dozen years later statistics proudly reported that one fourth of the world stock of scientists resided in the USSR. But how many of them were Nobel Prize winners, wags would ask. And then suddenly, I repeat, suddenly, we ran out of money. In the former amounts, of course. A poor state cannot afford to maintain a large scale research system. A common perception is that the number of researchers should have been radically cut precisely at that time, allowing those who remained behind to earn five times more. But now the research field is shrinking by way of nature. Some go abroad, some go to other fields. (It has been noted that scientists who go to business and public administration bring along the spirit of criticism and rationality. Perhaps this is, after all, a kind of usefulness). Those who stay behind in the research simply have no other option.
What these fellows need is money and freedom, especially freedom. Now scientific research is under the president’s patronage. And presidents come under the delusion of research. The only thing this presidentially controlled science can come up with is seminars and workshops, the precise replica of the now defunct meetings of Party activists and Red managers. Suppose the president has ordered to study a problem. A meeting is immediately convened, the matter is studied, developed, approved, and reported. Where the state intervenes there can be no science. But it is clear that one must opt for a different — independent — kind of research, one solely motivated by interest in the subject and subordinated to nobody and nothing but perhaps the truth, if you like the word so much. We do have this kind of research fueled by international foundation grants.
WHERE IS THE BEGINNING AND THE END?
Western culture itself has come under the delusion of science. This started during the Enlightenment, when public opinion was fed on materialism and paganism. That epoch begot the slogan that knowledge is power. The question of in whose hands was not considered very essential. “Let the human race recover that right over nature which belongs to it by divine bequest and let its power be given it; the exercise thereof will be governed by sound reason and true religion,” wrote Francis Bacon. The ideal of submission gave way to the proud goal of conquering nature and setting up public life under the laws of reason. Science promised to deliver all these boons. Three or four centuries later, the cognitive efforts of isolated individuals turned into a powerful social institution. The profession of research worker assumed a massive scale.
For some time, scientific research was not considered a social activity. A common perception was that a pure thought cannot have a social position and that the search for the truth cannot imply private interest. This is why science was juxtaposed to ideology as false consciousness. However, the twentieth century brought along thinkers who spotted some unexpected consequences of the Enlightenment project. This gave birth to the idea of applying the usual social-studies instruments to scientific research. American philosopher Paul Feierabend was the one who especially excelled in this. He persistently tried to prove that science is “the most modern, the most aggressive, and the most dogmatic religious institution.” In a democracy, this dangerous institution should be placed under public control. If a scientist thinks there is nothing better than science, “the citizens of democratic states need not share this righteous faith.” It would be better to separate science from the state, as has already been done with respect to religion. For it is via the state that scientists impose on the people the standards of only one form of thinking, considering all other forms simple stupidity. Feierabend makes rather unfavorable comments about researchers. I will risk quoting one, by no means the strongest, of them: “The bunches of intellectual parasites are developing their miserable projects at the taxpayer’s expense and foist them on the younger generation as basic knowledge.” This observation, the modern version of Lev Artsymovych’s aphorism, takes into account Government, an essentially new aspect.
Well, scientists are human and nothing human is alien to them. They want to do their job, earn money, and they resort to various ideological ruses to do so. There are a plethora of examples. In the times of a great confrontation between the camps, our scientists would advance the argument “they are overtaking us” to get funds. Their overseas counterparts used the same technique with equal success. And please spare me the necessity of recalling the doings of Trofym Lysenko. Today, scientists frighten us with the death of the nation and the whole human race. For example: if you don’t give us money, this contraption will blow up the whole planet. Or something like this: the Black Sea will catch fire, an asteroid will hit the earth, or another hole has developed in the sky. Sometimes all these discoveries resemble speculations that Doomsday is coming. Scientists claim to be doing their research, of course, for humanity’s benefit in order to avert various dangers. But who knows if this is so? A scientific sensation becomes a lure for credulous and deluded governments.
The question is not whether research is necessary. But, still, we should not ignore the fact that, by force of special conditions, it has acquired an exceedingly high status. A democratic society should create conditions for the free development of all cultural traditions. Scientific research is just one of those traditions, and it should develop along with the others.
