ABSTRACT
In this chapter we move on a stage—from considering comparative studies as a method of enquiry to considering them as a major instrument of public reorientation. That means, of course, directly using an academic study for practical purposes. Thus it may entail taking up the researches and skills of others in a way that directs them to specific purposes of our own devising. Or it may logically demand the inception of new studies acknowledged from the very beginning to have a practical purpose or a probable public outcome. Purists sometimes tell us that research must be free as the air. I suppose some always will be; there is room for poetry in science, and nobody but a Stalin would want to rule it out. But there is also a kind of poetry of conquest—no matter whether the pinnacle to be scaled is Everest or the solution of a desperate human problem. The one concern does not rule out the other, and our problems are urgent. Indeed academic enquiry, like political decision, draws strength from what is “in the air” here and now.
