What is knowledge for, and who should pay for the search?
People have always wanted to know, and finding things out has always cost something. What is knowledge for, and who should bear the cost of the search?
The picture
What the numbers show, read from the Data library each time the page opens.
How to read the chart above, and the words it uses (for research and development spending).
How to read the data
The figure is what a country spends on research and development, public and private, set against the size of its economy. It counts money put in and not what was found, and a country can spend little and still contribute through the work of its scholars.
Key terms
Research and development
Creative work done to increase knowledge and to use it to make new things or improve old ones.
Basic research
Work done to understand something, without a use in view.
Share of GDP
A sum set against the total value of what a country produces in a year.
Who has a stake
Each interest, then readings from the Catholic library and the Classics library that bear on it, oldest first. Choose a group to read.
To be free to follow a question where it leads, with time and resources to do the work properly.
That money entrusted to the search is used well and that taxpayers, donors and firms see a return in knowledge or in good.
That discoveries reach the patient, the farmer and the household that need them, and not only those who can pay.
That the search is ordered to the good of the person, and that what can be done is weighed against what should be.
For discussion
Aristotle says we desire to know for its own sake, and Bacon says the goal is new inventions. Can both be true of the same search, and who benefits in each case?
If it is the glory of kings to search out what God has concealed, what do those who pay for research owe to those who do it, and to those who will use it?
Paul warns that knowledge puffs up while charity builds. How might those who do research and those who ask what knowledge is for weigh one another’s interests?
