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A Time of Change
We face change on many fronts, and change characteristically
engenders both opportunity and uncertainty. The end of the Cold
War has transformed international relationships and security
needs. Highly competitive economies have emerged in Europe and
Asia, putting new stresses on our private sector and on
employment. The ongoing information revolution both enables and
demands new ways of doing business. During the 1980's, our
Federal budget deficit grew rapidly, constraining crucial
investments for the future. Our population diversity has
increased, yielding new opportunities to build on a traditional
American strength. Health and environmental responsibility
present increasingly complex challenges, and the literacy
standards for a productive and fulfilling role in twenty-first
century society are expanding beyond the traditional "three R's"
into science and technology.
As our institutions anticipate, manage, and respond
to change, we must continue to focus on the enduring core
elements of our national interest: the health, prosperity,
security, environmental responsibility, and quality of life of
all of our citizens. At the same time, we must respond to the
changing character of the challenges presented by each of these
core elements. For example, as the nature of today's external
security threat has shifted profoundly, we have come to recognize
economic and technological strength as integral to national
security. Likewise improved science and mathematics education
for all citizens is now recognized as a strategic imperative for
our individual and collective futures.
We must reexamine and reshape our science policy
both to sustain America's preeminence in science and to
facilitate the role of science in the broader national interest.
Each core element of the national interest requires strong
commitment to scientific research and education:
- Health requires the understanding, prevention and
treatment of disease and the assurance of an adequate, safe, and
nutritious food supply. These activities have become more and
more dependent on the discoveries of fundamental biology
research, often at the molecular level. Knowledge of the
molecular basis of genetic diseases, for example, will permit
design of effective new treatments such as gene therapy. The
importance of broad strength in science is evidenced by the
increasing role in biology and medicine of tools developed in the
physical sciences, such as magnetic resonance imagers whose
beginnings were in nuclear physics, or lasers that originated in
fundamental atomic and molecular physics research, or the
accelerators and instrumentation developed in the quest to
understand subatomic particles. Research is also essential in
social and behavioral science for developing effective public
health strategies for preventing disease.
- Prosperity requires technological innovation.
Basic scientific and engineering research is essential for
training innovative scientists and engineers, for many technology
improvements, and for achieving the revolutionary advances that
create new industries. Biotechnology and optical communications
are two examples, and others will follow. For example,
fundamental science and engineering will yield capabilities,
unimaginable only a few years ago, to design and build new
materials whether electronic or biomolecular. Applications will
span areas as diverse as civil infrastructure improvements and
environmental restoration.
- Our national security has long been based on
technological superiority bred of scientific and engineering
innovation and a strategic commitment to both breadth and
excellence in basic research. This will be even more important
with a reduced military establishment facing new and varied
security challenges such as verification methods for
nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. For example,
remote acquisition and rapid analysis of huge data streams and a
new generation of imaging technologies will be essential. These
capabilities will require advances in fundamental science and
engineering, and will have important dual uses in military and
civilian applications.
- Environmental responsibility requires much better
understanding of the complex interrelationships among components
of the biosphere and among human activities and the world around
us. We must carry out the necessary fundamental research and
develop appropriate technologies to detect and correct
environmental problems, to manage natural resources, and to
sustain the environment. The levels of population, economic, and
industrial growth suggested by current trends and patterns of
development point to an urgent need to improve industrial
processes and products and to provide food, energy, and natural
resources with greatly reduced environmental impact.
Understanding biological and physical processes is vital to
maintaining biodiversity and healthy ecosystems.
- Improved quality of life of our citizens involves
all of these elements, and more. Culture, inspiration, and full
participation in the democratic process are important for our
citizens' lives and for setting directions for America.
Scientific and technical literacy are crucial for understanding
and appreciating the modern world. Sometimes, the rewards come
directly from the leaps of science and engineering that inspire
us as one people and spark the imagination of our children. Only
months ago, we experienced this with the bold repair job on the
orbiting Hubble telescope and the remarkable clarity of the
resulting images. Such moments are themselves an important
public benefit of science, helping to satisfy humanity's age-old
drive to define itself through a better understanding of the
world we inhabit. At a more down-to-earth level, scientific and
technical literacy will provide the gateway to an increasing
number of high quality jobs.
Thus, science, both endless frontier and endless resource, is a
critical investment in the national interest. Science and
technology are tightly coupled, for they both drive and benefit
one another. To address the nation's science investment
strategy, we must reexamine every element of the enterprise: the
research portfolio; the infrastructure needed for world-class
research by world-class researchers; and the education of our
people in science and mathematics. Each element must be strong,
requiring that optimization be done within limited resources. It
is essential that we adhere to a long-range and diversified
investment strategy: nurture broadly-based fundamental research
for the decades ahead, conduct research aimed at today's
strategic areas, and undertake vigorous development activities
that spring from our accumulated science and engineering
"resource base."
While we cannot foretell the outcome of fundamental
research, we know from past experience that, in its totality, it
consistently leads to dramatically valuable results for humanity.
We have every reason to expect that the science investment will
continue to yield a very high rate of return.
"Science reveals new worlds to explore, and by
implication new opportunities to seize and new futures to
create."
Vice President Albert Gore, Jr.
Forum on Science in the National Interest, February 1994
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