Book Review – Pasteur’s quadrant: basic science and technological innovation (A personal view of the relationship between science and technology)

I read the book Pasteur’s quadrant : basic science and technological innovation by Donald E. Stokes and wrote a book review.

 

Pasteur’s quadrant, or Pasteur’s quadrant, refers to “use-inspired basic science” that is not biased toward either basic science or practical value. If we were to divide scientific research into four quadrants, basic and applied, Edison would be categorized as “research for application” and Bohr as “purely basic research. Pasteur would be categorized as “basic research for application”. In addition to studying cell theory, Pasteur also studied fermentation techniques and diseases in order to make concrete applications. The author of the above book argues for a ‘utilization-oriented basic science’ such as Pasteur’s, breaking away from the dichotomy of dividing science into ‘basic science’ and ‘applied science’. He argues that policies for modern science should be determined from this paradigm. In doing so, he identifies the roles of scientists, the role of research evaluation systems, and the role of the state in order for ‘utilization-oriented basic science’ to be actively practiced and established.
First, they argue that scientists need to be actively involved. To do this, they must first understand “why basic science has difficulties in the marketplace. Realizing the scientific meaning of specialized and specific research requires a vast scientific background, while realizing the practical implications is an easy task that can be done with a shallow scientific background. Thus, there is a huge knowledge asymmetry between researchers and those who actually support research. However, in general, the closer the research is to basic science, the more difficult it is to understand. Therefore, the authors argue that active involvement of scientists is necessary to define social needs. For example, Pasteur is argued to have directly emphasized the need for public hygiene by incorporating the concept of public hygiene into milk, a seemingly unrelated concept, to emphasize the social need, and a chemist named Mario Molina is said to have worked tirelessly to draw the world’s attention to the dangers of ozone depletion.
The author also emphasizes the peer review system. Instead of having a third party completely outside the field of research evaluate your work, you should have peers who are working in a similar field. In this case, the peers don’t just evaluate the scientific significance of the research, but also the benefits to society, which is how the research costs are allocated. However, the book acknowledges that this system has inevitable limitations. The book acknowledges that there are limitations to this system, such as researchers favoring old research methods over new ones, famous researchers over unknown ones, and large institutions over small ones. To overcome these limitations, he suggests renaming peer review to merit review, and argues that despite these shortcomings, the benefits of a peer review system are significant.
The role of the state is also explicit. The debate over whether the NSF, a national organization that supports pure basic science, should also support applied science has been going on since the 1950s. There has been a backlash against supporting applied science, with some arguing that the agency should maintain the curiosity-driven, discipline-oriented research it was founded on, and that it would eventually crowd out the basic sciences. The authors attribute this debate to the “postwar paradigm” that pervades society, which divides science into basic and applied sciences. The role of the state is to establish ‘strategic research’ that pursues basic research aimed at utilization without turning it into applied research with blurred goals. It is also important to ensure that strategic research does not lose its academic integrity.
In fact, this book does not explain why ‘utilization-oriented basic science’ is necessary, but rather how to establish it after assuming that it is necessary. However, the author’s reasons for advocating for ‘application-oriented basic science’ are revealed in the course of the book, so I would like to argue that there should not be a social paradigm that pursues ‘application-oriented basic science’.
If we pursue ‘utilization-oriented basic science’, the role of government in scientific research may change. This book advocates for a structure in which the government is the sole funder of research, and the government judges the usefulness of research when it funds it. However, there is a contradiction between limiting the source of research funding to the government and the government’s pursuit of the usefulness of research. The authors focus on the government as the only source of research funding and exclude corporate funding from the discussion. However, in reality, corporations are just as influential in funding academia as governments, and some fields are funded solely by corporations without government funding. Therefore, it would be impossible to discuss research funding without mentioning companies. In fact, in the case of Seoul National University in South Korea, the amount of research funding from private companies is 1.5 times that of the national government.
In the book, the author makes it seem as if applied science is not supported enough because the government honors basic science. In reality, however, applied science is well funded privately by corporations, and the basic sciences are perpetuated by government funding. Since corporations are inherently profit- and utility-driven, they tend to support application-oriented basic science because it is easier to see the usefulness. Therefore, it is the government’s role to respect and support basic science that is not immediately useful. If the government is also looking for the usefulness of research, wouldn’t it turn into another giant corporation to make a profit? Therefore, it is necessary for the government to respect the value of basic science rather than trying to find usefulness in it.
Also, the author’s definition of “application-oriented basic science” is unclear throughout the book. It can be seen as a discipline that exists somewhere between basic and applied research. However, there are no clear criteria to distinguish it from basic or applied science. In particular, the criteria for recognizing a basic science that has a certain degree of practicality as ‘utilization-oriented basic science’ is extremely subjective. It is difficult to establish a formalized criterion, and naturally, many controversies arise in the process of categorizing and funding research. In the end, it is a question of whether all research falls on a spectrum of basic or applied research. In this sense, I wonder if the book’s biggest argument for further developing ‘utilization-oriented basic science’ is a fuzzy argument that is nothing more than an ideal.
Finally, if only ‘application-oriented basic science’ is emphasized, the autonomy of basic science will be undermined. The author’s argument is not that ‘application-oriented basic science’ should be recognized and revitalized alongside basic science. They are advocating for all basic science to become application-oriented. However, this has a major side effect. In basic science, it is difficult to identify short-term utility, and the more fundamental the research, the more difficult it is to find immediate utility. Therefore, it is shortsighted to evaluate basic science, which is the foundation of all applied science, on the basis of utility to decide whether to support it or not. This is not to say that science doesn’t need to be useful. It’s just that it’s problematic to evaluate its usefulness in advance of the research planning stage to determine whether to support it. For example, when the theory of relativity was first being studied, who could easily see its usefulness? If the society of the time had pressed for immediate utility, relativity would never have had a chance to be fully explored. However, relativity has led to tremendous advances in many areas of science that no one could have predicted. In the end, if we want to see greater advances in science and its usefulness to humans, we need to respect basic science as the domain of basic science.
In the end, “utilization-oriented basic science” is not only vague in its scope, but it can also undermine the value of basic science by pursuing immediate utility, and it can even undermine the role of government as a separate entity. Our society needs both basic and applied science. The advancement of the applied sciences is based on the advancement of the basic sciences, and the advancement of the applied sciences is based on the advancement of the basic sciences. In the end, I agree with the argument that each feeds the other and drives us forward. However, the basic disciplines need to be respected as their own domain, and the applied disciplines need to be respected as their own domain. To argue that basic research should be supported in favor of applications would be to undermine both.