'Aesthetic' science spending questioned
	Talking science: Dr Margaret Wertheim at the National Press Club recently
Shelly Simonds Dr Margaret Wertheim, scientist and best-selling author, put up a good case for smashing the dichotomy between "pure" and "applied" science, during an address at the National Press Club recently to celebrate National Science Week. She also called upon scientists and the general public to set priorities for science funding, during her address entitled "What Do We Want From Science?" Setting these priorities was urgent, she said, because Australia did not have an infinite supply of science funding. In fact the resources were shrinking, with almost $100 million scheduled to be cut from science research in Australia over the next three years. "I think we have to look at what it is that science can potentially do for us," Dr Wertheim said. "There are two major things: the first is that it gives us knowledge of the world around us and reveals to us some of the beauty, the intricacy and just sheer wonder of nature. I like to call this science in the aesthetic mode. "The second thing that science can do for us is to help us develop important and useful technologies that change the actual practice and experience of our daily lives. This I call, as most people do, science in the applied mode." Examples of science in the aesthetic mode included the study of dinosaurs, high-energy physics and the study of deep space. Whereas electricity and computer technology were examples of science in the applied mode. Dr Wertheim said she preferred to use the term "aesthetic" science rather than the term "pure" science because "pure" implied that applied science was somehow un-pure, which was not the case, as many fundamental scientific discoveries had occurred in both areas. However she stressed that she was not saying science in the aesthetic mode was unworthy of funding, she was simply attempting to put a project's usefulness to society in the proper perspective. Dr Wertheim also asked whether the world could afford big-ticket items in aesthetic science - such as a new $2 billion Hubble telescope - when society was faced with problems such as pollution, over- population, soil degradation and hunger. Many areas of science research, including deep-space astronomy, were victims of their own success, she said. Over the past 100 years scientists were able to study the universe close to us with relatively inexpensive telescopes. "But we are at a point where all the new things are so far away both in distance or in time, that we need ever-more expensive telescopes to discover new things," she said. "I think it's fair to ask, how much is it worth to us as a society to see as far back as the big bang?" Dr Wertheim insisted she was not devaluing areas of science by classifying them as "aesthetic". "Aesthetics are one of the highest human callings and this is not a devaluing but an immense valuing of science," she said. "However, every other aesthetic field has to live within its budgetary limits and I don't think science is an exception to that," Dr Wertheim said. "For instance, we wouldn't dream of spending $2 billion on an opera." Asked how more women could be encouraged to study science, she said educators needed to do better in placing science in a social and historical context to make it more interesting. For instance, studying planetary motion in school would have meant more to her if she had learned about the social context of Christianity and Eurocentrism surrounding Copernicus' theory that the earth revolved around the sun in the 1500s. Dr Wertheim predicted that science research priorities would change as more women joined the scientific community because women tended to be more concerned about the social implications of their work. She also admitted there were dangers in calling for a debate on research priorities in science. "There is the problem, how can we engage in this debate without falling victim to the economic rationalists?"