Boon or Doom: Is That Really the Question?

An article today on MSNBC.com asks the question:

Will the Large Hadron Collider save the world, or destroy it?

That, I think, is a major problem with the view of science held by way too many people. There are too reactions. First, we ask what it will do for us and how soon. Second, we ask whether it’s going to destroy us all.

If we’re reasonably certain it won’t destroy us, then we don’t want to pay for it unless it produces immediate results.

But knowledge doesn’t really work that way. Ideas that later turned into practical applications, such as radio and television, not to mention cell phones and various medical procedures (as noted in the MSNBC.com article) took a great deal of time to develop from much of the basic thinking and research that was necessary before they could become a reality. Nobody could have predicted what would happen when electricity was first observed.

I’m reminded again of the comment by Henry Hazlitt in his little book Economics in One Lesson. He said that almost all errors in economics could be explained by looking at the problem over too short a term or over too narrow a range of people.

If we are to continue scientific progress, money will have to be spent on things for which there is no immediate use. That’s what discovery is about, after all–discovering things. If they remain to be discovered, we don’t know what they are, and the scientists can’t tell you what they are. The have to find out.

I expect neither salvation nor destruction tomorrow. I simply expect one very important new step in the gathering of knowledge.

(Please note that the MSNBC.com article does not get hung up on the initial question. It does a fairly balanced job of discussing the issue. Personally, I had no intention of being balanced. Also, Peter Kirk wrote an interesting post on this today from a slightly different perspective.)