ABSTRACT
The time has come to consider how we might bring about a separation, as complete as possible, between Science and Government in all countries. Throughout most of its history, science has been more of a calling than a career. From its very beginnings, science’s practitioners sought to apply scientific principles to utilitarian needs, to develop more effective weapons of war or instruments of civic betterment, such as aqueducts and canals. Almost all science was supported by public money and taxes. With this backing science became a career, a full-throated substantial, valued, and influential job, and the notion of a “calling” became an anachronism reserved for clerics. At the same time, “pure” science, science for its own sake, though still fodder for TV science programs, increasingly came to be seen as irrelevant, unneeded, though charming and interesting, a disposable indulgence and a waste of precious time and money.
