How much scientific research really ends up helping the economy in terms of new products and new methods of production and new discoveries that make us all (or some of us at least) richer ? Is the thoery that a new knowledge economy is based on research and this will generate wealth really true ?
I have doubts about this. The idea is that technological research creates an advancement of the economy is an odd one. First, alot of research can not be connected and probably WILL NEVER BE CONNECTED to some kind of business or economical result. Maybe economy creates a strong pressure on selecting what is researched and what goals research must go towards, but this is then a biased kind of scientific research, maybe a fake research where the goal is not further knowledge but further useless products.
If the economy or business models or products strongly influences what is researched could this effectively end all real scientific research in the more broader and fundamental sense ?
We don’t study hydraulic or mechanical computers because there is no money to be made, but maybe we can gain insight in how matter could interact. But if an insight can’t be connected to any money making, who cares and who wants it…
i think i have the perfect example here. genetically modified organisms (GMO). without it, corn would be a rare sight. tomatos? gone. no pluots, apples, most grains, grapes, not to mention wine, god forbid! all of these, and many many more have come from the scientific research into foods. they will eventually feed millions more effectively. add vital nutrients to diets that would be deficient otherwise which would lead to deficiency disorders and diseases.
all great results from scientific research in my opinion. but one aspect of this particular example speaks to the other concern you had, about how much scientific research ends up benefiting us. in the GMO example, scientists will go through thousands and thousands of genetically altered seeds before finding just one that could be useful. millions of seeds are wasted. i think this relates to other areas of research that don’t turn out to be of any use at all. but it had to be done in order to find out if it could be or not, right?
Science really doesn’t care much about the economy. Science is the pursuit of knowledge, often for its own sake. Science has a sister named Technology- now she tends to meddle a bit.
But economy limits what kind of science can be persued. It is limited both by resources, and by ideology. If you want to construct a very complex mechanical computer, no one would finance that and no one would pay the 50 or 100 researchers to construct it. But you could learn an enormous amount of details and information from such an item.
Of course probably only a small part of what you learned could be used technically to improve something or to gain some economic advantage.
But that is just one example, there are probably hundreds of other examples where science will never go to because there is no money to finance it. So our science is already decided from the outset, it already knows what it wants to discover and where it wants to go. It is already esatblished from ideology - economics and to a certain extent aesthetics - culture - philosophy.
this can only be said about the current state of affairs. the factors that determine where and when science can venture change constantly. astronomy, physics, human physiology, and others have all been able to expand their scope because society has become more lenient than it was, say in the middle ages when it was downright oppressive.
even if we could discover everything that society would allow us to in one year, the next year society would undoubtedly change and allow science into new, undiscovered lands. there will always be new things for scientists to discover, always.