Pure Research is a Bet on Progress

Castles in the Sky #44

“Pure research is a bet on progress” Made in Midjourney V5

Normally I spend part of my summer convincing a group of reluctant students that pure research is an essential part of the progress and preservation of civilization. 

But for the first time in four years, my calendar was blank for the middle weeks of June. I would usually teach a two-week-long intensive course to undergraduate students interested in research. I want to revisit what I wrote last year when teaching this course:

This specific course kicks my butt every year. The students are already within the very prestigious undergraduate honors program, and they must apply to get into the course. Even though the class is only 10 days long, the number of hours I'm meeting directly with students, the depth of small-group conversations, and the intense engagement of such an exceptional group, makes it feel like a full semester workload. 

One of my favorite parts of teaching this course was discussing the difference between pure and applied research. Most people don’t understand what the difference is and why pure research is something that should be valued and celebrated. Even in my research course, there are often students who think much of pure research is esoteric bean-counting, written in unnecessarily complex language to hide its uselessness. But through two weeks of lectures and the right readings, they always come around. 

The classic text that I used to teach the research course was The Craft of Research. If you are even a little interested in how to do research and how to be a better writer, I strongly recommend it. It is as useful as it is readable. 

Early in the book, the authors make the distinction between pure vs. applied research:

“We call research pure when it addresses a conceptual problem that does not bear directly on any practical situation in the world, when it only improves the understanding of a community of researchers. We call research applied when it addresses a conceptual problem that does have practical consequences.” 

The criticisms against pure research are obvious: it is conceptual. The phrase, “that does not bear directly on any practical situation in the world,” is weaponized against pure research. Critics will say that pure research is useless because it is conducted without any immediate, practical use in mind. However, I think there are two strong arguments for pure research. 

The first is that pure research makes our lives more psychologically rich. This excerpt from the book does a great job of explaining my point of view: 

“[A]s the term pure suggests, many researchers value [pure] research more than they do applied research. They believe that the pursuit of knowledge ‘for its own sake’ reflects humanity’s highest calling: to know more, not for the sake of money or power, but for the transcendental good of greater understanding and a richer life of the mind.”  

This belief assumes that you, like me, believe that increasing your understanding of the world is a satisfying end unto itself–that learning for its own sake is a rich rewarding experience. For those who share this mindset, pure research is the noblest calling there is. However, I realize not everyone feels the same way that I do about this. 

The second, even bigger reason that pure research is good is because it is inspiring. To see how it is inspiring, add one word to the definition: 

“We call research pure when it addresses a conceptual problem that does not bear directly on any practical situation in the world yet.”

Pure research is a bet on progress. Many people think of pure research as navel-gazing, whereas I think it is intensely exploratory: the simultaneous mapping of the universe and the human mind. Pure research breaks new ground in Art, Technology, Science, and the Humanities. Pure research is the mortar that binds the bricks of civilization. 

History is also littered with times when pure research led to immense progress. Quantum mechanics, initially an abstract thought exercise, now underpins everyday technologies like semiconductors and the microchips in our computers and smartphones. The theory of relativity was once just an intellectual postulation by Einstein and now forms the backbone of GPS technology, providing us with precise location data every day. Watson and Crick's intricate unveiling of the DNA double helix, a profound example of pure research, has revolutionized fields from medicine to forensics, giving rise to genetic therapies, genetic engineering, and personal genomics tests. Still, pure research has its detractors. 

There are two major reasons people denigrate pure research. First, they are not taking the long view: they are concerned with the immediate returns. They don’t see pure research as a bet on progress. The resource cost of pure research is too much for them. Second, they find pure research to be esoteric and useless because it’s written in the language of professional researchers. 

Critics accuse researchers of using dense, professional language to obfuscate what they’re doing–and sometimes they’re right. But I’d argue that it is usually a waste of time to redefine all the basic terms when writing for an educated audience. I know that sounds elitist, but in truth, whether or not you can communicate an idea to an audience unfamiliar with the subject has little bearing on your understanding of that idea. 

Some of the most exciting, important discoveries we will make in this lifetime–as individuals and a society–do not even have names yet. Academia, as an industry, has considerable work to do insofar as making research accessible and understandable to the general public without diluting its complexity; however, that doesn’t diminish the importance of pure research to the progress of our global civilization. 

There’s a famous thought experiment that divides all knowledge into categories. First are knowns: what you know you know, then known unknowns: what you know you don’t know, and finally unknown unknowns: what you don’t know you don’t know. There is an unfathomably higher number of unknown unknowns than the other two categories put together. Pure research is one of the only ways we can begin to systematically make a practical dent in the unknown unknowns. Not only is research for research’s sake a fun and meaningful activity to do, but pure research is a bet on progress–a bet that with deeper understanding we can make the world better in ways we do not even understand yet.

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