Peter:

(a) Q: Are the results of Gravity B likely to prove of any practical use?

A: Extremely likely. The overwhelming majority of pure science results have

practical application sooner or later. (I’d rate the proportion at around

80 to 90 percent, with the exceptions in things like deep-space astronomy

and cosmology, or the further reaches of biological classification –

discovering a new species of sea cucumber, perhaps — and a couple of other

fields.)

Of course, the time lags between (i) observation of a new fact and (ii)

practical application of the underlying theory (when THAT’s been worked

out!) are very irregularly distributed, ranging from weeks to millennia.

The actual applications are also very highly unpredictable.

To take an example from Asimov again (he is invaluable in situations like

this): Suppose you assembled 100 of the world’s leading scientists in 1890

and asked them the following question: “Which area of current scientific

research is likely to yield the greatest advances in orthopedic surgery over

the next few decades?” It is a pretty fair bet that none of them would have

got the right answer, which would have been: Research into the passage of

electric currents through rarefied gases. (Which led to the discovery of

X-rays.)

One of the definitive comments on this topic, though in the context of math

rather than physics, is the one I quote on page 359 of Prime Obsession. It’s the great French

mathematician Jacques Hadamard, in his book Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field: “The answer appears to us before the question…

Practical application is found by not looking for it, and one can say that

the whole progress of civilization rests on that principle…”

(b) Q: Should this kind of thing be publicly funded? COULD it be privately

funded? A: Here my Coolidgean attitude to public expenditure collides with

my scientific curiosity at high velocity, causing mutual annihilation and a

shower of exotic particles. After a particularly dramatic result in a field

I’m particularly fond of, I might waver, but most of the time Coolidge wins.

No, this should not be publicly funded, not in general. I’d make some

exceptions — in time of war, for instance, when something like radar needs

a shove from the public purse, then obviously. Believing as I do in the

maxim “qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum,” I’d also allow some similar

exceptions for military-related research in peacetime. Public health is

another area where there ought to be some exceptions. In general, though,

and with a heavy heart, I would not have government fund things like Gravity

B.

COULD such things be privately funded? I bet they could. It’s hard to say:

everyone’s got so used to gummint funding for this stuff, the will to do it

privately has atrophied. (And probably, though I don’t know the details,

for the same reason, tax laws have swung away from being helpful to private

funding.) When you look at the gazillions of dollars that Americans

voluntarily spend on ice cream, or bobble-head car ornaments, or bikini

waxes, it’s inconceivable that a billion-dollar pure science project

couldn’t get funding. A billion is only four bucks per capita, after all.

And plenty of individual Americans have a billion to spare. George Soros,

for instance….