In today's Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley argues that funding for science research is mostly a waste of money. The Journal summarizes as follows:
"Does scientific research drive innovation? Not very often, argues Matt Ridley: Technological evolution has a momentum of its own, and it has little to do with the abstractions of the lab"
He cites some scholarly studies that can be construed to support his claim. But he misses the one case history we actually have that demolishes his claim: China.
Ridley's argument is that technology develops from the bottom up, not the top down. He claims that scientists are usually one step behind technologists, filling in the abstractions after the technologists have made the discoveries.
In the first place, the history of technology comprehensively contradicts his claim. There are indeed some cases in which inventions were created by people who weren't scientists: James Watt and the steam engine; Thomas Edison and his many inventions; Samuel F.B. Morse and the telegraph.
However, in each of these cases, the invention could not have been made without first establishing the underlying science. The invention of the steam engine, for example, could not have been done without first having established the basic gas laws, and that work was done by scientists, not technologists. Although Watt was not a scientist, he could not possibly have figured out how to improve the Newcomen engine without his knowledge of the physics of gases and the condensation of water vapor. Similarly, both Morse and Edison based their work on the discoveries of scientists about the behavior of electricity and magnetism. Without a solid knowledge of science, all the tinkering in the world would have led nowhere.
But these are all old examples. Over the last hundred years, all the important inventions were created by scientists. The transistor, for example, was created by physicists at Bell Labs applying new discoveries in solid state physics. Nuclear energy was not cooked up by some hobbyist fiddling around in his garage; it was done by a huge government-funded program. The moral value of nuclear energy is irrelevant to the question of whether technological innovation is driven by government-funded science.
But the most devastating argument against Mr. Ridley's thesis is the one actual case history of the application of his recommendation: China. Right up until the 1950s, Chinese government never spent a penny funding basic science. Every technological advance China ever made was carried out by technologists fiddling around with stuff.
And that worked magnificently for a long time. China was the world leader in technology from at least Han times two thousand years ago right up until about 1700. But that's when Western technology surpassed Chinese technology. Within a hundred years, Western technology was way ahead of Chinese technology, and Western countries were kicking sand in China's face like bullies. Right up until the mid-twentieth century, China was the technological skinny weakling that all the techie he-men beat up for fun.
The reason for the change was the Scientific Revolution that swept through Europe in the 1600s. That led directly to the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, which put the scientific West far, far ahead of the people in China who relied on Ridley's strategy of 'just letting technology bloom'.
Today, the Chinese look back on the last 150 years as a time of humiliation, and they are determined never to let that happen again. They are certainly not taking Ridley's advice and just letting technology happen: they are actively funding lots of scientific research and making rapid progress.
We'll have a good test of Ridley's prescriptions in the field of stem cell research. American scientists get little funding in the field because of anti-abortion politics, and are making slow progress. Meanwhile, the Chinese are energetically funding research in the field. If Ridley is right, then America will lead the way in technology using stem cells. If he's wrong, China will lead the way. Anybody want to take a bet on the outcome?