"Necessity is the mother of invention"

Advancement in the field of defence(e.g. Missiles, Fighter Aircraft, RADAR, Tanks etc...) depends mostly on threat of war.

But if we will consider other fields of Science and Technology, advancement in those fields mostly depends on need of people to increase their level of comfort. Those fields has rarely to do anything with war or threat of war.

Regards,

Nitish

The greatest advances in physics and chemistry (relativity theory, quantum mechanics) occurred during the late 19th and the first decade of the 20th century, at a time that no war is imminent (first world war was still a decade or more ahead). If you go further back, Newtonian mechanics was not conceived during a time of war for the empire. And vice-versa, the USA has been involved in numerous other wars (civil war 1861-1865, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq etc.) but no other major break-through's happened before, during or immediately after these times. So I find essentially no correlation (statistical or otherwise) between major advances in science and technology and war-fare. If there was, the Roman Empire, that was in an almost constant state of war during its existence, should have produced quantum physics and exa-scale computing by the year 400 A.D. :-)

Science and technology are mostly driven by two things: necessity (as other stated before) and the resources which no need for conducting research.

War is only one possible source of necessity (if you like to call it that way) WWII for example brought a lot of new developments in mathematics, because there had been code to be made and deciphered, in electronics because RADAR was needed to detect airplanes and ships/submarines, organ replacements - well it was war, so no explanation to be done here...

Other driving forces for science and technology are social, politicla or economical problems as well as ecological problems.

The sole need for real understanding is for sure very important but it is mostly very limited to science disciplinces which can do good work without large costly equipment (for example some branches of maths) but that is nowadays unfortunately not sufficient to drive really big advances. Furthermore certain necessities make people aware of certain problems which need a solution in the first place.

It depends on the definition of 'enormous advancements'. As Ioannis Christou has already written, QM & SR were developed outside the frame of a WW. But if you focus on Radar, then you will conclude that there exists a strong correlation. Anyway, when a WorldWar is apparent, many technologies arise, but they are for killing people. After the WW has finished, then we see their peacefull applications. Personally I prefer science to be stacked if in order to go away we need a WW.

I think Ioannis Christou is essentially correct, but there is a rather large anomaly in the historical record. Physics in the USA before 1930 was a backwater compared to Europe. It is not now, and I think that is almost entirely due to WW II and the Cold War. A long essay is possible on this, but nuclear physics was driven to immense achievements by war needs - hard to see how this would have happened otherwise - and the great age of expansion of Government support for physics, the 1960"s, was driven by Sputnik and its implications.

Charles, I think that your statement of "backwater" pre-1930's US science is a bit simplistic. We had many scientific leaders in the US since its inception. Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Priestley, Alexander Bell, Nikola Tesla, the Wright brothers, Robert Fulton, and Samuel Morse, for example, all experimentalist out front in their fields, who we might characterize as inventors without attributing science to them, but let's face it, they could not "invent" without being scientist. I think the end of the science "backwater" was marked by two events: the discovery of radioactivity and fission (in Europe), and the invention of the transistor (at Bell labs), this led to an explosion of research (driven by state competition, money, or whatever) in physics and electronics. Therefore, I think the "backwater" is an artificial construct of what we believe "science" has evolved into today, i.e. the nuclear and silicon age, rather than "natural philosophy". From early on the US (even enshrined in the Constitution) protected what we now call intellectual property, and the US patent office has been around since. I don't think it is a coincidence that the US came into existence during the "Age of Enlightenment", when science became distinct from pseudo-science like astrology and alchemy. The US has always had a strong applied science contingent, a country founded by men of science and enterprise (not religion as some might suggest), but it must be noted that basic science is more often the one that has more impact, like the transistor (basic science, even though it was funded by a corporation), quantum mechanics, the Higgs boson, these mostly bear fruit many years later (10 years for the transistor in integrated circuits, 30-40 years for quantum mechanics with the laser, atomic fission 7-19 years with the atomic bomb/nuclear power, who knows for the Higgs..), but have much much larger impact (i.e. Nobel prizes and new sectors of the economy), and incidentally are not driven by war, threat of war, economics*, or necessity, but rather purely by curiosity and ego (and of course some research money*). It is true that the military or military interests fund lots of scientific research, but mostly applied research, like rockets and the internet, but those had end use goals. In any case I would point you to an excellent book, "Guns, Germs, Steel" now also a PBS series, which addresses some of these topics on a very broad canvas, with much more depth than we can go into here as to what drives science and innovation.

PBS Guns, Germs, Steel

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/

*economics is not money, with the exception that strong economies can afford more basic research, waiting those many years for a possible payoff, but this is not an economic decision, but rather a societal one to spend this money, a perk if you will.

Dear Kirk,

It is probably more than a coincidence that you are somehow associated with Los Alamos National Laboratory - a place where research (both basic and applied) has taken place for the military since the time of WWII.

I personally was seduced by the military propaganda on the heels of Sputnik to follow the path of science. I, like many adolescents, might have taken a different path were it not for the propaganda.

Nevertheless, I am extremely glad I did become a scientist. It has been extremely gratifying, and has offered me extraordinary independence in my life. And, by the way, all of my career was devoted to solving scientific problems that would eventually be applied to a wide variety of military missions.

I just wish that many more people today could somehow be seduced by science, without the military impetus. The world would be a far better place populated with people who follow The Scientific Method, and all that it implies, including Critical Thinking - people would be seeking the truth instead of the dollar.

Antonio, technically LANL is run by a private company for the civilian Department of Energy, we just certify the stockpile for the military. :-) (although true enough started as a military project under civilian leadership) Anyhow, I would say I was "seduced" by NASA "propaganda" if you will. Space flight and astronomy. If you ask me, NASA should be planning a manned mission to Mars in the 2018 time frame, and not just rovers. The moon mission, the grand tour of the solar system, the space shuttle, and to a lesser extent t the space station, all served as inspiration for people to study STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). I think as a society we can inspire by setting lofty goals for institutions like NASA or like the Humane Genome Project between the DOE and NIH, or the search for the Higgs. These types of goals inspire students to go into science and understand what the challenges are.

I don't believe so. However, many advances take place at times of crises within the accepted scientific paradigm. Nonetheless, great advances in technology, NOT science, often do seem to take place at such times, for example: the ballistic missile, the first jet fighter etc developed in Germany near the end of world war 2. These are strictly technological advances not advances in fundamental science.

Probably the answer to this was different 60-80 years ago than today. On top of the "threat of the war" or simply "the war itself," not only the advancement of pure sciences was more important, but also, there was an amazing pool of readily-available talent in other countries looking to flock to the US, since a) their living conditions would be an order of magnitude better here, b) they would be appreciated a lot more, c) resources were abundant.

So, my point is, it is one thing for the government to recognize the importance of pure sciences, mathematics, physics, etc ... it is another thing to have plenty of scientists, academics, readily available to execute the plan. You simply cannot groom so many scientists and academics in a short period of time., It takes decades. Albert Einstein is possibly one such example.

In a very simplified way, France, Germany and Russia dominate science in the 17th through half of the 20th centuries (e.g., Laplace, Gauss, Fourier, Lagrange, Chebyshev). In my view, WWII is when the scientific power is shifting from Europe to the US (and partially England) due to an incredible portion of this European talent migrating to US PERMANENTLY. With the US getting a fresh (and, practically FREE !!!) pool of 1000's of Einstein-grade scientists and academics, it had a much more different scenario than today ! There was barely any research investment necessary and so much to invent. It was the right time, right place, right topic.

Today, we have an amazing pool of talent in the US, but, the research investments are exponentially higher to invent anything (e.g., Large Hadron Collider, spread over a 17 mile tunnel just to invent a couple extra particles !). So, the answer today is totally different than 60-80 years ago.

Very well written Tolga!

"When I am challenged by people--not all of them conservative--who tell me that they agree, for example, that we should enact comprehensive universal healthcare but wonder how to pay for it, my answer is that I do not know immediately where to get the funding but I know whom I should ask. I was in Congress on September 10, 2001, and I know there was no money in the budget at that time for a war in Iraq. So my answer is that I will go to the people who found the money for that war and ask them if they could find some for healthcare." ( by Barney Frank: 'Cut the Military Budget' available at http://www.thenation.com/article/cut-military-budget).

This underscores a point that should be made in this discussion, which is that scientific development responds to economic policy. If the majority of the money is directed towards a war effort the companies and the people behind it will go in that direction. It is no different with scientific discovery. Scientist have to respond to the economic environment that they live in, and if the funding opportunities are directed towards advancement of the war effort, that's were they will go (for better or worse).

A second point that is curious is the example made by Antonio regarding prosthetics. Prosthetics is a field that will more than likely come from war efforts due to the following reasoning. Under non war conditions maiming comes from accidents which most of them come from product liabilities(including car accidents). Most of the lawsuits in product liability will have an effect on corporations of reducing the risk by introducing new developments to minimize such recurring injuries. This does not happen in war due to its very nature and therefore the demand for such advancements will come statistically from war casualties (that is if you treat each liability on devices individually as opposed to a very general category such as mechanical devices malfunction)

Arturo, your points are very good. I will expand on them a little bit. As a person that is in the academia, I am actually glad to say that, the government funding for research is very well aware of the BROADER IMPACTS concept. Just because you are funding military research doesn't mean that, the results will only be applicable to the military. The INTERNET was invented as a result of some military funding. Is the military the only beneficiary ? I think we all know the answer to that.

So, funding a specific area is one thing .... funding an area that can have much broader impacts is another thing. Military research funding typically has very broad impact. I was at a conference in NC a couple days ago and talked to a researcher that is working on Quantum Computing, funded by a military entity. Now, if his efforts pan out and the Quantum Computing is advanced, most definitely the beneficiaries will be far beyond the military ...

My point is that, in general, the economic policy should fund RESEARCH, and the funding spread should be BALANCED. Just like any diet, a balanced diet is good for you ! The worry I have is that, if this government , at some point, starts losing side of the fact that, RESEARCH in general is possibly THE MOST important type of funding in our economic policy, that's when I will start really worrying. I am not terribly worried about making the split of the research funding BALANCED, since, they are already doing a reasonably good job. I am worried about the THE TOTAL ALLOCATED AMOUNT for it ...

Tolga,

Points well taken. All inventions and innovations that come from military oriented funding are in the end subject to the applications given to them.

I think that based on the discussion, the answer to whether funding has been balanced or not and the broader impact will depend on the specific call for technology, the time period where it was invented and the criteria used to judge its impact (The Internet is a place for the dissemination of ideas and excellent place to collaborate in places such as RG, but it is also a place where malware is spreading faster,has been a place to plot criminal activities, etc.. The same goes for nuclear energy).

In my personal opinion( which is biased) I think that funding does not have broader impact it should have and it is not balanced. One of the elements that I consider most important is investment in more basic research funding which is becoming almost extinct in favor of more short term research. This is like driving with low beams in a pitch dark street, sooner or later you will reach a dead end street and will not have time to hit the breaks. I think this is one of the reasons we are not seeing fundamental breakthroughs in science. Again, this is my very subjective view.

Arturo, there are two discussions here: 1) how much money should we spend for research overall ? 2) WHERE in research we should spend this money ?

Your point is that, in (2), PURE science research spending and APPLIED science spending should be balanced ... I couldn't agree more !

Tolga,

Again, your points are very incisive, well taken, and appreciated. While both contribute to the current state of affairs,the topics should be treated separately.

I think that the more basic the research the more the spillover effect into other areas will be. The more applied and focused the research the more limited the applicability will be (while a proposal for a missile targeting system can be adapted to autonomous vehicle driving, it will depend on how you approach the problem and what are the proposals constraints).

With regards to overall spending which is (1) I do again think that too much money is being diverted towards military spending in general (my biased opinion).

I think, building on what I said, and going back to the original question " Do enormous advancements in the states of science and technology depend on war or the threat of war" ... Possibly, war times make the government policy shift. While the (1), i.e., TOTAL spending is a different story, (2) definitely gets much LESS balanced at war times. However, for ENORMOUS ACHIEVEMENTS to happen, you need the TOTAL spending to go up ? Do you agree ?

I'll get a little mathematical here: ! Let's call the total spending T, spending on Applied sciences A, and pure sciences P. According to this, T=A+P. Of course, this is a way too simple categorization, but, let's work with this for now.

I am "mathematically," interpreting Antonio's question as:

"Does T go up during war times" ?

It is a different story for the research funding to shift from more "P" to more "A".

However, if "T" goes up, and "P" stays the same, then, we are simply pumping more money into Applied science research, which will still benefit the status of the overall research . Am I right ? or, am I over-simplifying it ?

Tolga,

I would add A_s +P_t, where s and t are the distinct areas of research within applied and pure science. You can turn it into differential equation and get a great model. Thumbs up.

One more thing. Let's not confuse ,

a) military spending with b) military-funded research.

(a) is more of a political discussion, which I will stay away from.

(b) is more of a RESEARCH FUNDING discussion. As I mentioned before, military-funded research is a very effective way to fund research, since the results have been shown to be very effective in the "applied research" area.

It is possible that, Antonio's initial question can be interpreted as "is it possible that, since at war times, military-funded research goes up significantly, this benefits science and technology in a big way ?"

Very stimulating discussion. I just want to pick up on one thread. This has to do with Applied Research and Development (R&D).

Even though the sponsors (military or otherwise), spend money to address a specific concern of theirs (it could be broad or it could be narrow), often breakthroughs are discovered by people doing R&D in a different field who see an analogy between the the first field and a new field. This accounts for some of the "spillover". The analogy may be a technical detail or it could be a fundamental principle, but it lends a new way of looking at a problem.

Regarding my original question, I was hoping that the discussion would lead to some thinking "outside the box", like what other ways could R&D (basic or applied) be stimulated? Some inspirational leaders awakening our youth to take up math, science, or engineering and become part of a movement to advance mankind - such as JF Kennedy inspiring the nation to put a man on the moon or the youth to serve society at large. Any thoughts on that?

Antonio, I agree ... This is what I meant by BROADER IMPACT ...

I also agree with you that, what causes scientific discoveries is a lot more than simple SPENDING on RESEARCH ...

OK Antonio, but you have to always remember the 'Manhattan Project'.

I think, it's wrong opinion that war can help for development of science. It's an illusion.

What is helpful to war, it's sometimes very harmful for life (bioweapon, chem.weapon, nuclear weapon). Moreover, it's very expensive to get rid of these weapons.

There is another side of the process. Archimedes defended Syracuse (his native town) from Roman troops, and figured out how to set fire to the ships with a system of mirrors, redid the harbor of Syracuse (it forever remained Archimedean), etc. However, capturing Syracuse (through treachery, they could not by force of arms ) Roman soldiers killed Archimedes. The Roman emperor executed not only the soldiers who killed Archimedes, but also their superiors. But it was too late

The main engine of science --- people. What is very useful for science --- scientific schools (schools of thought).After the second world war, the German School of Physics and Mathematics has been completely destroyed, all European schools injured. Many areas in science ceased to evolve. Many scientists have emigrated to the United States, so that locally the U.S. won, having inherited some of the great scientists. But these scientists out of their environment function less efficiently, rather, they needed time to adjust to another life. Time was lost (for continuous and stable development of science). Although the United States won locally obtaining successful development of some fields in science, globally they lost along with all of humanity.

The problem of money for science (how to convince somebody to give it etc.) is absolute another problem.

@Tolga, Arturo, Antonio,

Do you really think that the "enormous advances" in science and engineering are equivalent to R&D funds invested by governments? From a historical point of view I have a very hard time accepting this fact. Certainly, advances in S&T (not of the "enormous" type) are highly correlated with government spending for R&D, but I wouldn't go as far as you propose. In fact, in the same way that I don't see much correlation between warfare and "enormous breakthroughs", I don't see much correlation between government spending of tax-payer money in R&D and "enormous breakthroughs", and in fact, as the world "homogenizes" more via globalization (see internet, migrations, social media, open access etc.), I would say that chances are that a major break-through will depend less and less on a particular government's spending. Of course, in fields that require heavy investments (experimental physics, and Big-Science in general) this cannot hold true (unless an experimental particle physicist works at CERN or Fermi Labs, they would have little chance of making a significant discovery). But theory -responsible for most fundamental breakthroughs- will be "open field" for all to "try their luck", and more so, in the near-future.

As a final (personal) note, in Europe, we have seen a very serious budget for Information Society Technologies projects (still lagging behind the US of course), but nothing much to show as far as results are concerned (other than very long documentation reports, and unstable demos of dubious quality that only hold in very controlled environments). In fact, Google has probably changed our lives to a much higher degree, and has much more to show as applied research results than most of the European research projects carried out since the early nineties!. And Google hasn't been funded by lots and lots of tax-payer money as far as I know...

Ekaterina,

I think that scientific development is a consequence of demand and offer.If the demand is for war efforts that is where the development will happen. While I could not possibly discount altruistic research, almost all of it will need a source of funding.

That being said we must make every effort such that our research has a spillover effect into other areas that are beneficial to science and preserving life (all of it not just human).

Another point is that advances in medicine will come fro war efforts(sadly but true). and lastly while we may view the negative effects of research we must also look at the half full glass and try to make the most of it. What is it that we must avoid in the future since we have seen what it does(research into nuclear weapons, etc.)

Ioannis,

nuclear energy, the Internet, drone technology come from defense funding. While it is true that not all advances in science comes from defense funding there is a significant amount of it that it does. What I think we can elaborate more is what should be considered significant in the criteria for analysis. Another point is that current activity in defense research impacts almost all areas of technology and science. For example current defense research into propulsion has a spillover into commercial flights. since the companies doing research into propulsion for defense are almost all associated with commercial endeavors. The same thing happens with top tier universities in the US, most of them receive funding from the Dept of defense.

While this is a generalization and it may be indirect benefit you cannot discount it as part of the forces that advance research.

Ioannis, I was strictly commenting on "what happens when there is war." I was saying that, "The R&D investment may shift towards more applied sciences, that will benefit military." I wasn't commenting on anything about what the government policy about the war should be. Like I said, this is politics. If you ask my one puny vote, of course, I would say, PEACE EVERYWHERE.

But, I was analyzing the consequences of the changes in R&D spending and how that effects the general status of science. Of course, like was commented before, R&D spending itself is not the only thing that effects the status of the science either.

Arturo, I agree, in fact, when I was in the US, my own Ph.D. was funded by the USAF Office of Scientific Research (and NSF as well). However, does the internet as we know it today come from miltary spending (arpanet)? I don't quite agree. The web originally came into existence from an extremely small project at CERN (by a very small team of researchers/developers), without any military funding.

I am not downplaying the importance of public funding for research, but I doubt there is a strong correlation of public spending with great breakthroughs (think theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, calculus, discovery of anti-biotics, Turing machines and theory of computation, and a few other ones), which I believe are the result of single (or very small teams of) individuals that "do things", whether they are publicly funded or not.

Ioannis,

major advancements of what is known as the Internet (not the web) came from ARPANET which was funded by DARPA. Part of the major study of parabolas in mathematics are missile trajectory calculations. Part of Turing life was influenced by Bletchley park and the decryption efforts carried there against the ENIGMA. Also, cryptoanalysis helped funnel funding to advance computation advancement during the war effort. Einsteins involvement along with Leo Szilard in the war effort starting with the letter to Roosevelt was instrumental in the drive to make the atomic bomb (I would doubt that atomic physics in general would be so far ahead without the initial funding from the war effort).

All these events helped shape the research fields and the funding that we have today(again, whether for good or bad). While it may be argued that there is no strong correlation there is also evidence not to discount that there is a strong .

correlation.

Don't get me wrong, I do not personally like the idea that major breakthroughs came from war efforts, but I am hesitant to discount the strong correlations from military funding in the advancement of science.

Arturo, this is exactly what I mean ! Completely discounting the impact of military-funded research is an Ostrich thinking ! However, this has nothing to do with spending money on MILITARY EQUIPMENT. Military research will definitely help design better equipment, but, the broader impact is extreme !

Arturo, of course the (early) internet was a direct consequence of the arpanet (directly funded by DARPA). However, as I pointed out, today's internet (and its most important "application", the web) has little to do with the early efforts funded by DARPA.

Regarding Turing, he certainly was a hero and did his country (and the free world) great service during WWII, but his most influential work, the one that really shaped computer science as we know it today, occured in 1936, and he wasn't funded by any government for this...

My position is that the achievements that I consider truly "great" were not produced by teams of individuals that received heavy funding from governments (I am not talking about military funding here, I am talking about public funding in general). And therefore, personally, I don't believe in the "leaps" of advancement of science and technology (and society in general) through govenrment spending, rather I believe it's another process that drives these leaps (I don't know its causes, or its workings, we just witness its effects). Of course, advances in S&T do happen every day through public spending both civil and military (although much more effectively in some countries than in others), but usually they are not of the "giant leap" kind (except for the Apollo space program :-))

Incidentally, as far as I know, all of the great scientists of the previous centuries (think Gauss, Newton, Leibnitz, Lagrange, L' Hopital, Laplace, Fermat, etc.) were either already rather rich when they started their careers, or in any way, did not depend on public funding for their research, that we still consider great!

Thank you for the very nice discussion on this!

Einstein does seem to have benefited from World War One, but not because of war funding - as a pacifist, Einstein was able to get on with his work on general relativity with reduced interference from colleagues and critics because most of the other German researchers interested in the subject were preoccupied with war work.

This is an odd recurring theme - Newton's early work seems to have benefited from the Black Death (which caused the universities to shut down so that Newton was working in isolation back at his family's farm), and Galileo seems to have done some of his best work while under house arrest.

Maybe, it's more the case that military applications are naturally more dramatic. War is simpler than peace with its political compromises. This also makes it easier for the military to get funding as the stories are easier to tell.