Perhaps because we are at the threshold of medicine itself, and therefore at the junction between science and medicine, it might be worthwhile to view science in society from a broader perspective. I confess at the outset a lack of expertise. The societal forces that drive science are not a matter I have studied, taught, or published about. What I have to offer most resembles a pleasant luncheon conversation with a colleague. Still, it may have a value in widening our perspective and at least mentioning forces that surely are at work even if a bit outside my own world of study.
Here is a podcast made by AI using Coogle NotebookLM.
PEOPLE IN GENERAL ARE CURIOUS
The pair of circles, one red 1 white, refer to people in general. There is ample evidence that they care about what is there in the world about them. The evidence is overwhelming: museums, zoos, planetariums, the love of travel. People are curious.
This is why empirical research, new measurements about a mountain or a deep-sea rift, beautiful star pictures taken through a telescope orbiting us in the vastness of outer space, the bewildering magical power of modern genetics regularly show up in the science section of the daily newspaper.
Likewise for theory. People very much want to know how it all came about. I need only mention Darwin, Galileo, Einstein – and God.
So, whereas some are so motivated by curiosity they become scientists, their work meets with and satisfies a general desire within society for the new things they discover. Certainly this is one reason why society has supported science for centuries.
EMPIRICISM AND THEORY DEPEND ON INVENTION, AND THE REVERSE
The mastery and imagination that drive empiricism or the creation and testing of theory are futile without the instruments and reagents that come from invention. That is why the blue lines in the picture radiate into both spheres of knowledge – the white circle and the red circle. It is true that a wider knowledge of the world creates a more fertile ground for theory, and also true that theory gives rise to new empiricism. Thus the white and red arrows connecting the two circles. But the dependence of both an invention is dramatic when you stop, as I did here, to make a diagram.
The opposite is also true. The more we know about the world at large, and the better our theories about cause, the greater the resources available to the inventor. It is for this reason that the blue arrows go in both directions.
COMMERCE STIMULATES INVENTION, AND THE REVERSE
As I’ve said before, new inventions are nutrient for commerce. At the same time, the manufacture and distribution of new equipment and reagents allows invention to proceed at a higher rate. It does the same for both kinds of research, empirical and theoretical.
This brings into focus a whole new level of demand and support for research. Human curiosity, within society and within scientists themselves is a powerful force. But the desire to increase commerce arises from different sources. In other words it is an independent force, beyond curiosity, and related to such things as a desire for wealth.
COMMERCE IMPROVES QUALITY OF LIFE.
Here, we are come upon a truism. Just about everything that we have comes from commerce: new spaceships, better can openers, safety pins, gene therapy. Like desire for wealth, the desire for a more comfortable and generous life is a powerful force in society and one of the ways it can act this through stimulation of invention.
THE LONG 19TH CENTURY
Beginning with the French Revolution and ending at the beginning of the First World War, a period roughly between 1789 and 1914, and particularly in the West, the world experienced what is often called the industrial revolution. For better or for worse, agrarian life gave way to factory life for a huge sector of society, and worldwide ability to produce new kinds of things increased remarkably.
It is precisely this ‘long’ century that contained among the most extraordinary explosive increases in scientific knowledge. At the beginning, we had primitive steam power. At the end, we had radioactivity, relativity, quantum theory, high speed railroads, electric power and lighting throughout our cities, radio, and automobiles – and more. Medicine came into possession of antisepsis, anesthesia, bacteriology, sophisticated surgical instruments, X-ray, and laboratory testing over a wide range of measurements. The long 19th century is a remarkable example of commerce and invention driving science, and the reverse, giving rise to exponentiating increases of both.
THE CASE OF MEDICINE
As if my enjoyable luncheon conversation had come to its conclusion, it is time to move on from this global and perhaps overly obvious discussion and turn to medicine in proper detail. All three of the great structures of science come to a focus at medicine, and that means they point to disease. For it is against disease that medicine brings its energies and intellectual resources.
Naturally, the diseases all contain empirical and theoretical components, and medical care benefits from both forms of knowledge. I have already pointed out that tests and treatments are the essential mediators of health care. Both arise from invention and become a reality through commerce.
But I have not as yet made clear just how diseases are constructed, what they are in the terms we have been using here. That is my next task.
Before I go on to that matter, let me pause just a moment and look back over this brief and rather inexact formulation. Like the general desire of society for a better life drives invention and commerce, so does the desire for better health. Probably this last is more powerful than the rest. And because all the linkages we have studied thus far create synergies and positive feedback loops, the strong desire within society for better health inevitably drives research in all three of its dimensions. In the United States, that strong desire is manifested through the granting system of the National Institutes of health. It is for that reason that the arrows pointing from science to the diseases also point backward, into science.