Just sat through my first experience of an STFC Town Meeting. This is a meeting of a group of physicists to discuss matters of the Science and Technology Facilities Council. It was almost exclusively about money: how the limited funding we get from the government should be allocated, and how we should try and get more money.
The government has, within the last few years, drastically dropped the level of investment in particle physics. This means that a number of existing and future projects have had to be scrapped, and other projects have had to be scaled down.
While I was listening to this discussion, I was thinking about how money should best be used. Farrah, my wife, works for a charity that aims to help children around the world who have virtually nothing. When I think of how much aid the millions of pounds spent on physics could buy, it puts into perspective the discussions here. Isn’t science a “luxury” compared to food and water? Would it not be better to divert funds from such “luxuries” around the world into solving the problems of hunger and disease?
But there’s a word – disease. If we strive to only spend money on the very immediate needs around the world, then we will stop the research that is necessary for future needs. For example, can you imagine what state we would be in if we hadn’t invested in medicine over the last hundred years? It doesn’t bear thinking about. Research, by nature, is trying to find out how things work and how we can do things that we are currently unable to achieve. The immediate advantages are normally very small, but the future advantages may be huge. For example, by the end of my PhD, there won’t be any physical results. Just a design in a computer. In twenty years time, this may be part of an actual accelerator that can be used to cure cancer and save lives. We need to balance the immediate needs with the advances necessary for the advancement of future society.
So it all comes down to money. There is only so much of it, especially here in the UK, where we seem to be struggling with finding enough to pay the bills (nationally speaking), and we need to be wise in how to distribute it. But is there an alternative?
The Church is God’s way of running the world. It is meant to provide for the whole community. I think the difference between our way of looking at money and the Biblical perspective, is that we think we are entitled to the money we “earn” (intrinsic in the word), but the Bible says that everything we have is a gift from God. If we have anything, it is because God has chosen to give it to us, in his mercy and grace. This makes it a lot easier for us to give it away! In the Church, when we see a need we should meet it.
I’m not sure how this helps with the balance between immediate and future needs, but I think it comes down to motivation. We shouldn’t be able to look on poverty and pain without helping. That should be our natural response. But if you are motivated to be a research scientist, then you should do that too, knowing that your research is investing time and energy in the future.
It’s really making me re-evaluate my lifestyle and priorities.