Science: Theory can be practical

As President-elect, Barack Obama (D) now faces the task of filling key positions in his administration, and lately I've been thinking about one position in particular: His science adviser. The position, which practically went defunct under President George W. Bush, may once again become important in 2009, in large part because of the now widespread recognition of the global energy crisis.

It's clear that we need science experts in the White House to ensure the effectiveness of much-needed solutions to the energy problem. We'll also need plenty of scientists researching alternative energy sources and energy-saving techniques. This is all well and good, and I'll be glad if science starts to have an increasingly visible role in politics. However, although it's clear that increasing scientific influence in this country will have many practical benefits, I have to wonder: Is there room in our pragmatic, modern world for the idea that science is worth pursuing for its own sake?

When former President Dwight Eisenhower officially established the position of science adviser in 1957, his motives were largely tactical. The United States needed to hold its own against Russia during the early stages of the Cold War, and part of that meant having a competitive space program.

Since then, the practical effects of science have become more and more familiar to us. It's easy to make an argument for why we should increase spending on scientific education and research when we can point to useful and profitable benefits. But ultimately, the most exciting scientific ideas explore the physical laws binding our universe, the strange equations that govern material interactions, the subatomic phenomena roiling beneath the surface of everything. Do practical benefits arise from such musings? Yes. Should they be our only goal in funding scientific thought? No.

The truth is that theoretical physics and its practical consequences often intersect in surprising and interesting ways. One of the most famous examples of science's pragmatic use was the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II. Richard Feynman, who worked on the Manhattan Project as a young physicist and later won the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics, once told an anecdote that illustrates how the most impractical kind of scientific thinking can have practical consequences.

In high school calculus, Feynman learned the formula to take the derivative of a function an indefinite number of times. There's the first derivative, the second, the third, all the way up to the nth derivative. So he wondered: Was there such a thing as a half-derivative? Could he find a formula such that taking it twice would give you the first derivative, taking it four times would give you the second, and so on?

He did find such a formula, and he experimented with it purely to amuse himself. Years later, working on the atomic bomb, some physicists put up some equations on the board that looked like Feynman's half-derivatives. Drawing on the playful thinking he had done back in high school, Feynman was able to provide a solution, and thus his impractical theoretical musings turned out to be quite practical, after all.

The point I mean to make with this story, however, is not that creative scientific thought is valuable only when it has a practical effect. The most theoretical questions concerning physical laws may not have immediate practical consequences, but they are still worth pursuing. The practical applications of science grow out of the kind of creative thinking that, at first sight, appears impractical.

Thus, if we are going to find pragmatic scientific solutions to the world's problems, we must acknowledge that the sciences that can produce these solutions also extend beyond them. The best way to give our children the tools to solve the problems of the future is to instill in them a love of learning, a desire to understand nature's governing principles and a playful attitude toward solving both practical and impractical problems. With a theoretical interest in science as their basis, the practical solutions will arise on their own.

Susan Holcomb is a physics major. She can be reached at holcombdbk@gmail.com.