Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
corporate research - is not this solution tantamount to abandoning
basic research?
Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating
the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter, but
what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get
through the winters to come?
Of course there are many pressing problems facing our nation
and our species. But reducing basic scientific research is not the
way to solve them. Scientists do not constitute a voting bloc. They
have no effective lobby. However, much of their work is in
everybody's interest. Backing off from fundamental research
constitutes a failure of nerve, of imagination and of that vision
thing that we still don't seem to have a handle on. It might strike
one of those hypothetical extraterrestrials that we were planning
not to have a future.
Of course we need literacy, education, jobs, adequate medical
care and defence, protection of the environment, security in our
old age, a balanced budget, and a host of other matters. But we
are a rich society. Can't we also nurture the Maxwells of our time?
To take one symbolic example, is it really true that we can't afford
one attack helicopter's worth of seed corn to listen to the stars?
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