Fundamental Research | HESA

Fundamental Research | HESA:

"But this neat division was a rhetorical device rather than a meaningful scientific taxonomy.  As Donald Parsons pointed out in his book, Pasteur’s Quadrant, outside of theoretical physics, there really aren’t many fields of science where scientists knock about “without thought of practical ends”.   Fundamental research often solves very practical problems that industry faces (which is true for a great deal of research in Engineering, Computer Science, and Chemistry), or which quite clearly has commercial applications (true for much medical research, for instance).  Discovery, as David Robinson says, does come from “what scientists think is important”, but that begs the question: “how do they decide what’s important”?  The answer, often, is discovered by interacting with industry and finding out what companies think is important.  If that weren’t true, frankly, the contribution of university science to economic growth would be a hell of a lot smaller than it is."