Pat Churchland and I lead a memorable (in my memory, anyway) seminar at UCSD in 2005. Some of the themes it explored are in this note I revised about then, “Towards science worth doing.” This page simply provides a pointer to that note, and the abstract from the seminar for context.
Science worth doing
CogSci200 Seminar — Winter 2005
Richard K. Belew, Patricia Churchland
Science is a profession, a calling. But unlike many other professions, and in common with the arts, the scientist must be directed by an internal, personal compass that can point towards those questions most worth asking. Science also cannot be separated from either its costs or its consequences. Complicating matters further is the fact that the universe scientists study is expanding, literally! But even more, the scientist’s world is expanding conceptually. Almost daily the practicing scientist finds his or her original question in need of refinement into subsidiary questions, each potentially requiring further investigation. To be successful the scientist must become a skilled gardener, pruning away less important issues to concentrate limited resources on more important ones. Their universe is expanding in the sense that the number of (very good) questions to ask will always dwarf the number of scientists available to ask them. In the resulting vacuum, new scientists can be sucked along by the vagaries of funding. A government grant or corporate research directive may specify a general line of inquiry, but within this mandate the range of intersting phenomena is still virtually limitless. It is here that the creative scientist is in most need of his or her own compass. Given several new research questions, all equal in scientific merit, which is most worthy of the scientist’s time, and society’s investment? While scientific education may do well towards the development of the tecniques of scientific practice, students can be left ill-prepared to guide their work towards “science worth doing.”
Such personal determinations are made even more difficult because modern science is a tremendously social activity. The connection between a scientist’s activities and their consequence generally involves a long chain of other scientists and engineers. Within this social mesh of colleagues and potential collaborators, all suggesting new lines of research, perhaps providing funding and enabling technologies, and all with their own personal compasses, how is an individual to maintain their own research agenda while coordinating it with others’?