Dear Researchers,
Hope all be safe and healthy and far from Covid-19,
I would like to ask your opinion about you overall purpose of doing research.
Throughout the history, researchers have tried to discover our world's physical phenomena. There must be several reasons behind of these researches such as curiosity, power, fame, humanity and so on.
I will appreciate if you let me know your reason for the research.
It is very important to understand the real reason of our researches and designing our future research map.
Best wishes,
To satisfy human curiosity most generally, or, more specifically, to identify causes and solutions to an array of problems. I suppose there is always a tension between these two -- that is, between research "for its own sake," which may simply satisfy one person's curiosity, and research that is focused on a particular problem or seeks an answer to a question with contemporary relevance. This tension is also closely related to another issue: research funding. It's more difficult to justify funding (especially if it comes from the public coffers) to satisfy one person's curiosity but that does not have relevance to some contemporary issue or problem.
To satisfy human curiosity most generally, or, more specifically, to identify causes and solutions to an array of problems. I suppose there is always a tension between these two -- that is, between research "for its own sake," which may simply satisfy one person's curiosity, and research that is focused on a particular problem or seeks an answer to a question with contemporary relevance. This tension is also closely related to another issue: research funding. It's more difficult to justify funding (especially if it comes from the public coffers) to satisfy one person's curiosity but that does not have relevance to some contemporary issue or problem.
Thomas Clark Thanks for the reply. Probably for most of the researchers, curiosity is the main and initiating reason of research; however as you said they need to satisfy funding resources. So they may need power and fame. However I guess being center of attention can be another reason (from psychological viewpoint).
In my opinion, research is initiated from the human curiosity, but leads to several sub-categories. Besides all of these sub-aims, namely helping the humanity, changing the world, reputation, money, improving the quality of life, mental satisfaction of being positive and so on, "power" can be considered as the critical aim. Power, itself, is derived by a fundamental human sense, desire to Eternity!
While the bodies, senses and thoughts of the people may fade through the history, the results of their efforts to change the world can remain permanently...
I think curiosity is the prime driver. I agree with Thomas Clark that there is a tension between research "for its own sake," and that which is described as "useful." That tension reminds me of a thoughtful essay written by Abraham Flexner in 1939 entitled, "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge," that appeared in Harpers. The essay is on-line at https://library.ias.edu/files/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf
I think comprehending something is the base of human evolution, especially spiritually. It doesn't matter that thing relates to our social life, personal life, career or something else. The point is when you can find a solution about anything, you have a feeling that helps to struggle with the difficulties scaring you since a long time ago. When I realize something scientific, even though unimportant in the eyes of people, I get that feeling. Literally, research is my safe house.
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