There’s an interesting and unusual article on the arXiv today entitled Why is Astronomy Important? Here is the abstract:
For a long time astronomers and other scientists believed that the importance of their work was evident to society. But in these difficult days of financial austerity, even the most obvious benefits of science have to undergo careful scrutiny. Eradicating poverty and hunger is a worldwide priority, and activities that do not directly attempt to resolve these issues can be hard to justify and support. However, several studies have told us that investing in science education, research and technology provides a great return not only economically, but culturally and indirectly for the population in general and has helped countries to face and overcome crises. The scientific and technological development of a country or region is closely linked to its human development index a statistic that is a measure of life expectancy, education and income.
The full text of the paper can be found on the IAU website here.
The article focusses on matters relating to the transfer of technology between astronomy and, e.g. industry, aerospace, and medicine, its effect on technology we are familiar with in everyday life, on astronomy as an exemplar of international collaboration and on its wider cultural and philosophical impact. Many of the points made in this article can also be found in the Royal Astronomical Society‘s free publication Beyond the Stars: Why Astronomy Matters which is available for free online here.
I recommend you read the full article and make your own mind up about why astronomy is important. I have just two comments, which are partly questions. The first is that I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the interpretation of correlations like that mentioned in the last sentence of the abstract (between technological development and the human development index). The issue is the basic one that correlation of two phenomena does not necessarily imply that one causes the other. Is it really possible to establish rigorously a causal link between spending money on astronomy and wider societal benefits? I’m not saying that there isn’t such a link, just that it’s difficult to interpret evidence which is dependent on so many factors. Could one not argue instead that more developed countries spend more money on astronomy because they can afford to?
The other thing that troubles me with arguments of the type presented in the paper is that there is a danger that emphasizing the transfer of knowledge to other disciplines as the rationale for funding astronomy implicitly negates the argument that astronomy has intrinsic worth of its own. In other words, answering the question “Why is Astronomy important?” seems to accept at the outset that it isn’t. If it is indeed the case that we can only justify astronomy because it has produced spin-offs in, e.g., medicine, why not just spend more money on medicine and forget the astronomy?
I’m not saying that the technology transfer arguments carry no weight, just that they are definitely double-edged and should be used with caution. For the record, I think we should fund Astronomy (and other sciences) primarily because they are an essential part of the fabric of our culture and civilization; all the rest is icing on the cake. In other words, I support state funding for the sciences for very much the same reasons as for the arts. I’m fully aware, however, that this unlikely to persuade the powers that be as effectively as an appeal to economic benefits; that’s why science funding has fared so much better than arts funding in this age of austerity.
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