00100	                 BASIC SCIENCE AND BASIC TECHNOLOGY
00150	
00200	
00300		There  is  a  substantial  consensus  today  that research at
00400	Stanford  is  insufficiently  oriented  towards  civilian  goals  and
00500	excessively  oriented  towards  military  applications.  (Admittedly,
00600	stating the consensus in this way passes over disagreements about how
00700	military  the research is, whether defense research should be done at
00800	all, whether the U.S. wears a white hat or a black one,  and  whether
00900	research is good or bad on the whole).
01000	
01100		1.  There  is  pure  research  and  applied  research.   Pure
01200	research is pursued by the researchers because it is interesting.  It
01300	is  supported  by the government frankly through the National Science
01400	Foundation under the theory that some good will come of it  some  day
01500	with  examples  taken  from  biology  or nuclear physics according to
01600	taste.   Congress  has  never  been  extremely   enthusiastic   about
01700	supporting pure research, and it is not clear that they will agree to
01800	support it at much above its present level.  It seems  very  unlikely
01900	that  Congress  will  support  everyone  who  would  like  to do pure
02000	research and is qualified to do so. Besides  this  frank  support  of
02100	pure  research,  a  substantial amount of it is supported by agencies
02200	with applied missions on the ground that some good will  come  of  it
02300	for  this  agency's  particular  mission.  The Defense Department has
02400	taken a particularly "enlightened" view of supporting pure  research.
02500	This enlightened view is mainly the result of the military dependence
02600	on the advice of high level scientists who push  their  own  goal  of
02700	supporting pure research as well as helping the military out with its
02800	specific problems.  In  the  time  scale  since  World  War  II,  the
02900	enlightened  view  has not been borne out by retrospective assessment
03000	of the extent  to  which  present  military  hardware  resulted  from
03100	previous  pure  research  supported  by  the  military.  This was the
03200	conclusion of Project Hindsight established to look into the  matter.
03300	In  my  opinion,  military support of pure research has been partly a
03400	swindle and partly  a  quid  pro  quo  for  direct  help  on  applied
03500	problems. At present, Senator Mansfield has initiated a witch-hunt to
03600	root out military support of pure research and  non-military  applied
03700	research.
03800	
03900		Applied  research  can be divided into two parts: research in
04000	support of a  specific  mission  and  research  aimed  at  developing
04100	technical  capability.   We shall call the latter basic technological
04200	research and distinguish it from pure scientific  research  and  from
04300	support  of missions.  It is distinguished from pure research in that
04400	it is specifically  oriented  at  producing  capability  and  not  at
04500	satisfying  curiosity.   Examples of basic technological research are
04600	development of integrated circuits, most of the work of the  Stanford
04700	Artificial Intelligence Project, and most engineering research.
04800	
04900		Basic  technological research has had a very spotty record of
05000	government and private support.  In some areas, it gets carried along
05100	with  mission  oriented research and is well supported.  In others it
05200	has a long tradition of university support  and  gets  carried  along
05300	with  pure  research.   Examples  of the former are medical research,
05400	much biological research, aeronautics.  Examples of  the  latter  are
05500	the   traditional   branches  of  electrical,  mechanical  and  civil
05600	engineering.  The scientific establishment in this  country  is  more
05700	interested  in  pure  research  than in technological research, and a
05800	number of years ago engineering schools conducted what almost amounts
05900	to  a purge of technological research, and some of what is done today
06000	in engineering departments is as unlikely to ever  have  applications
06100	as  the  theory  of numbers.  NASA supports very little technological
06200	research today;  as  the  funds  got  squeezed,  many  projects  were
06300	abandoned  on  the  grounds that they were not in support of specific
06400	approved missions.
06500	
06600		Many important areas of basic technology are totally  ignored
06700	by  the  academic community.  For example, as far as I know, there is
06800	no academic research in production  engineering:   companies  develop
06900	special  hardware  for  their own production lines and the sellers of
07000	machine tools  develop  new  products,  but  projects  in  production
07100	technology   of  greater  scope  that  organizing  a  particular  new
07200	production line  or  developing  a  partcular  new  machine  tool  or
07300	transfer  machine  practically  don't  exist.   An  exception was the
07400	Defense Department support of the development of numerical control of
07500	machine tools now phased out.
07600	
07700		Another  example is construction technology.  The traditional
07800	discipline of civil engineering is related to construction  technolgy
07900	in  that  it  is  concerned  with making structures that will serve a
08000	given function, but it is little concerned with how the structure  is
08100	to be put together.  CHECK THIS OUT