Todd and Everyone,

Of course I think the discovery has to be incorporated to have value. It is incorporated immediately in the life of the discoverer, and the more people who find out about and understand it, the more it becomes "incorporated."

But I don't think there need be social change or global understanding in order for an insight to come alive. I think insights live within people and unleash their full value with the first contact. Then, if more people lear that knowledge the value just multiplies in quantity, not magnitude.

So, if what we mean by "science for its own sake" is that there is value in an idea even if only one person knows of it, then I agree with that. There is value in science for its own sake. But of course, there is no science for its own sake without people. At least one person. So, always, at least a portion of the population will be familiar with an idea or method. In that way, it is already in the populus, whether in a minute way or on a larger scale. So, even the science studied for its own sake is a science of the people.

Just perhaps fewer people than what we mean when we say that science is integrated socially within the culture. Of course, this latter model has different consequences. Social conversation and maybe even social consciousness as a whole would be different under wide-spread scientific knowledge and integration. But that's just a behavioral byproduct of a larger scientific community. The integration that happens when each person incorporates scientific knowledge into his understanding of the world independently is the key event to the life of that knowledge and it lives once in its discoverer as it lives it the hundred other people who will learn it after him. Unaltered, as far as I am concerned. So, I guess, yes, something important does happen when one person figures out a part of nature or a new way to look for clues in nature, or whatever. And that is the central experience. That individual contact is the value of the insight. The rest is just a matter of volume and its unavoidable consequences, such as greater scientific awareness, more funding, environmental conscientiousness, and so on.

Because personal worldviews and philosophy are most important to me, I view the experience of personally coming in contact with scientific insight as more important than, and of primary value to, that of a society which harbors a certain percentage of scientific awareness and hence displays certain social results.

Thanks for the question.
Maya

On Mon, 24 Apr 2000, Todd Duncan wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> Several months ago we were discussing the value of science literacy: Why is
> it important for people to understand the key ideas and methods of science?
>
> In that context, I'd like to raise the following question: Does a scientific
> "discovery" have significance, independently of how the new law or principle
> or observation is incorporated into peoples' lives? Is there something
> important that happens as soon as one person figures out how some part of
> nature works, or does a significant fraction of society need to know and
> understand it and incorporate it into their lives and behavior, before it
> really matters?
>
> I guess this is really an old question, of whether understanding nature has
> value purely for its own sake, or if it has to have an impact on human
> society in order to get its value.
>
> Todd