| classifications are into two kinds, one more worthwhile, the other less so. If people use these distinctions in discussions without making their implicit criteria explicit, much talk is likely to be at cross purposes. If they do make the criteria explicit, we spend a great deal of time disagreeing about the criteria. The reason for the difficulty is plain. The drawing of intellectually satisfactory sharp lines is virtually impossible. Moreover, no distinction corresponds exactly with any other; each criterion divides the total field up in a different way, so that the classifications never coincide. In discussion, fuzzy edges and awkward overlaps can be concealed, ignored or passed over in polite silence; at worst, they confuse an audience or allow us to achieve a misleading degree of agreement. But we are concerned with practical issues. How should research be organised and supported? When it comes to political and administrative issues about the allocation of resources, —jobs, buildings, equipment, organisation,—practical distinctions must be drawn. Firm working rules can never avoid all anomalies; and some anomalies may carry serious consequences. All the same, distinctions are often taken for granted as though they were clear and self evident when in fact they are not, and I hope by making some of them explicit at least to open up discussion. I list five criteria for distinguishing types of research. Each criterion can be used, though not always sensibly,—to divide research into paired opposites. (i) Academic disciplines—the traditional divide between arts and sciences. (ii) Usefulness,—pure and applied research. (iii) Cost,—the range for millions of dollars to a bare income for the research worker, and the cost of his books, paper and ink, costly and cheap research. (iv) The scale of organisation,—individual and team research. |
| (v) Objectivity,—the problem of covert or open moral or political implications; value free and value loaded research. Each of these criteria draws lines of different kinds in different places; and none of them avoids the problems of an area of fuzziness on the boundaries. Yet when we attempt decisions about resources, we find the criteria tend to tangle with each other. If, for example, we compare say a chemistry project and a history project, we can expect that the chemistry project is more likely to be useful, is more expensive, is more likely to involve team research and organisational support (i.e. laboratories), and more likely to appear objective and value free. More likely, but by no means certainly. History requires libraries and archives, and may use very expensive techniques for, say, archeological evidence. (i) The classification of research by academic subject involves plenty of knotty problems I know full well that art and literature, not only the culture of the elite, but the whole field of the creative activities of the people are not merely worthy of study; they constitute the end and aim to which the production of material wealth is no more than the means. The way we divide the manifold complexities of academic activities is fairly arbitrary, and no classification is without conceptual and practical disadvantages. The popular and ubiquitous division into arts (or humanities), and sciences is not very helpful. Is Engineering science? Are social sciences Sciences or Arts? Or on their own? Is law a social science? Where do mathematics, or psychology or architecture fit it? In Britain, since the funding of the social Science Research Council in 1965, the number of disciplines defining themselves as social science has increased remarkably. But boundary disputes continue. Two tendencies make the problems worse. First, people argue that existing boundaries are inhibiting and silly, and advocate, —not always cogently,— 'interdisciplinary studies'. But while some work to destroy boundaries, established disciplines grow and divide up internally, creating new boundaries; paradoxically, the interdisciplinary |
| initiatives themselves create new fields,—biophysics, ethology, control chemistry. Indeed, the multiplication of subjects can be confusing. Tribology, which I discovered the other day, is not the study of tribes, but of friction, thus bringing together friction. lubrications and wear which were formerly separated in different laboratories and different people. The names of subjects, and the names of groups of subjects are not then agreed, precise or stable. This living confusion must make the life of those who decide policy and the distribution of resources difficult. (ii) My second criterion for classifying research usefulness, is normally and widely discussed in terms of a simple contrast between pure and applied. This simplicity obscures complex issues. People constantly point out that overcoming practical problems often requires research of great theoretical interest, and that disinterested theoretical research may turn out to have all kinds of unexpected applications to practical problems. Moreover, the range from solving intellectual puzzles to the technological development of specific products,—aircraft, computers, insecticides, oil rigs,—is wide and should not be thought as a simple linear continuum. I comment on three suggested revisions of this common Pure/Applied contrast. The first shifts the whole criterion away from what the researchers are thought to be doing to their legal commitments. The contrast then becomes research for its own sake, as against Customer-Contractor research; that is to say, we separate all research, whatever the subject or purpose, for which someone is prepared to pay in order to achieve specific results, from all other. The implications of drawing the line in this way are economic and political. Governments and foundation would still support research for its own sake by giving salaries and facilities to people whose job is to invent and carry out research projects,—university staff and special institutes, for example. But for commercial or policy purposes, companies, agencies and ministries would enter into clear contracts with the lowest competent bidder, and expect clear |
| results on time. Customer-Contractor research would become a much more commercial affair, and its efficiency in theory would be guaranteed by the laws of market economics. Other ways of revising the pure/applied contrast are more conventional and simply provide more steps along the continuum. 'Pure' should be distinguished into 'Pure Basic' which for the time being developing nations would do well to avoid, and 'Strategic', that is, basic research which is likely to have relevance to their problems. The advantage of this distinction would be to encourage 'basic' research in areas which the industrialised nations neglect, but which could be of direct interest to the developing countries,—for example, in nutrition, in agriculture, in what is cat 'intermediate technology’ and so forth. Equally, the 'applied’ end can be divided into two; research of a general kind about practical matters, and highly specific problems of the development of particular products,—the 'development' part in the phrase 'research and development'. (iii) A third distinction is price. Much academic research costs very little; but some research is colossally expensive Moon walks and sophisticated weaponry are only possible for the governments of industrialised countries When research needs cash, even modest cash, we have to face questions of administrative control and of cost/benefit estimates. I shall argue below that one aim of less developed countries should be to build up and employ organised professions of specialised scientists. The use of scarce resources to train and employ as many scientists as possible per unit of government funds seems to me one important criterion to be added to others in choosing how to spend research funds; in the short run many medium or small projects,—with fairly tight controls,— would seem wiser and more fruitful than a few expensive, but perhaps more prestigious projects. (iv) Some research is individual, and many of the best ideas come to single minds working alone. Yet clearly much of the technology of most modern scientific research requires both team work and organisation. One comment that was |