December 2008 Archives

In 1959, the physicist and novelist C. P. Snow gave a lecture on the division between what he described as the two cultures: the science-literate, and the, er, literature-literate. He spoke of the disrespect that they have for one another, and most importantly, the lack of communication between them.

The problems have never really gone away, partly because there aren't really just two cultures, but a vast balkanised landscape.  Looking at the science side, beyond the physics/chemistry/biology splits, how about science vs. engineering or pure vs. applied physics? Some of these lines are artificial, a product of university structures, but some go a little deeper into the motivations of the people involved - a division of cultures, for example the division between academic research labs and industry.

There is a perception that the UK isn't very good at knowledge transfer between these two groups, essentially transfer of the results of research to those who can turn them into 'useful' products. I was at a conference last week focussed on what was described as the 'Knowledge Transfer Challenge', where they outlined the problems (generalising somewhat: apparently academics have no interest in the applications of their work and business people have no understanding of the long-term nature of scientific research) and asked the question: what can be done to fix them? 

But are these problems real? If the UK really wasn't any good at knowledge transfer then we wouldn't have the wealth of modern technologies which have their roots in work done in UK physics departments - everything from fibre optics to GPS to MRI scanners. These were all originally products of reserach conducted in academic physics labs, but would be nowhere close to useful unless the ideas had been successfully transferred across the divide to industrial researchers and engineers.

We have these successes, and many others, despite the cultural differences within science. What is needed is a strong research base, and strong science-based industries -- and we have those. So perhaps the question should be: is there really anything that needs to be fixed?