Philosopher Helen De Cruz, in her new book, Wonderstruck: How wonder and awe shape the way we think, explains that 鈥渨onder is a useful emotion, because it points to gaps in what you thought you knew鈥�. I read this line while also working my way through Annie Jacobsen鈥檚 book The Pentagon鈥檚 Brain: An uncensored history of DARPA, America鈥檚 top secret military research agency. DARPA, which stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has an annual budget of over $4 billion, comparatively almost 20 per cent of that allotted to NASA. While you may never have heard of DARPA, you have probably used one of the innovations it helped develop, such as the internet.
What does a defence agency have to do with the philosophy of wonder? Well, a perennial debate about science is how well it should be funded and for what reasons. Implicit to this is the question of what should motivate the activity of scientists. In another book, The Territories of Science and Religion, historian Peter Harrison argues that this debate comes down to what he calls 鈥渕aterial usefulness鈥�. This is another way of saying that it is a matter of what value to society research is.
However, what counts as materially useful alters over time. Today, we find ourselves in social and political structures that emphasise research outcomes that improve health, create better energy technologies, lead to new economic opportunities or support military endeavours. Harrison notes that early in the European Enlightenment in the 17th century, material usefulness was still organised around the morality of Christian theology. Our concept of material value changes, and this affects what we see as worthwhile in science.
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This isn鈥檛 just a philosophical question for me. A few months ago, I wrote about the push to save the Chandra Observatory at NASA (24 August, p 20). Some people loved this piece. There were also critics, especially among my colleagues, who worry that saving this orbiting telescope would mean opportunities for future missions get curtailed. Since NASA鈥檚 astrophysics budget has been kept relatively flat, it seems tough choices have to be made.
I don鈥檛 like what this means. Suddenly, scientists are at each other鈥檚 throats about whose work deserves funding, when in fact all of it does. Should it be X-ray or ultraviolet astrophysics that we emphasise in next-generation space observatories? Both! Why should we have to choose? Of course NASA鈥檚 budget is never going to be infinite, but neither is it true that the US can鈥檛 afford a few more instruments. I don鈥檛 need to convince other scientists of this, of course, so much as those who hold the purse strings.
We don't need to be thinking of novel ways to kill each other to make exciting new discoveries
That should be the people, but in the US it is actually members of Congress and whoever is president. What motivates them? As Jacobsen鈥檚 history of DARPA shows, security concerns and the desire to win the next war are extremely motivating for elected officials. In the past, anxiety about the Soviet Union and the prospect of nuclear war saw DARPA plant early seeds for the development of long-range drone aircraft. After these debuted in the early days of US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, drones became a staple of militaries around the world. The technology has since made its way into commercial uses like farming.
One theory of how science happens is that people are at their most creative and efficient when motivated by war or economic competition. Consider Jacobsen鈥檚 opening anecdote, about the first hydrogen bomb test in the Marshall Islands. Japanese and Indigenous people were badly harmed by this, and the land devastated. The night before the test, Jacobsen writes that scientists were betting about whether the detonation would set Earth鈥檚 atmosphere on fire, destroying all life here. Despite the risk, they did it anyway.
It was an unconscionable choice to me. But one reason particle physics received funding in the following decades was because political leaders believed it might help the US discover new weapons. So whether I like it or not, this is my intellectual ancestry. These days, the US establishment doesn鈥檛 see particle physics and astronomy as so militarily significant, and our funding reflects this shift. Does that mean what we do isn鈥檛 important?
I think De Cruz鈥檚 latest book answers this question: our work creates a sense of wonder, and wonder matters. It helps us identify gaps in our knowledge that could lead to breakthroughs. We don鈥檛 need to be thinking of novel ways to kill each other to make exciting new discoveries. We should be motivated by intellectually nourishing ourselves and the generations to come. I think DARPA鈥檚 budget should go instead to those of us who help create a sense of awe about the universe.
Chanda鈥檚 week
What I鈥檓 reading
Maybe not the wisest choice, but I鈥檓 working through Sinclair Lewis鈥檚 novel It Can鈥檛 Happen Here, about a US dictator.
What I鈥檓 watching
I just saw Mexican horror film Belzebuth and can鈥檛 recommend it enough.
What I鈥檓 working on
I just finished a first draft of a women鈥檚 and gender studies syllabus for a course on gender and science.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an associate professor of physics and astronomy, and a core faculty member in women鈥檚 studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her most recent book is The Disordered Cosmos: A journey into dark matter, spacetime, and dreams deferred
