ABSTRACT
The most pressing problems in physics have been thought to reside in the very small, for the simple reason that the smallest components of matter are presumed to be the building blocks of the universe. The central notion of chromodynamics was that quarks can be used to explain many of the most important properties of sub-atomic particles. The x-ray and gamma-ray observatories will permit us to investigate phenomena such as neutron stars and the vicinity of black holes, where the violence of massive gravitational collapse surpasses anything we have ever observed. Considerations drawn from the successful science of the time alone will turn out to be too narrow in estimating how the balance of fundamental research may shift between different areas. Even within physics itself, larger considerations — some from fields as remote as the philosophy of science — need to be brought together in a rhetorical fashion to defend the support of one area of research over others.
