Mind Over ‘Dark’ Matter – The Higgs-Boson & The Value of Theoretical Academic Enquiry

CERN’s recent discovery of a particle consistent with the long sought-after Higgs boson has been hailed as a momentous achievement in physics. According to press releases, the finding provides substantial support for the standard model of the universe, since it explains why the particles proposed by the standard model should have mass. Although the complex physics underlying this explanation may be beyond non-physicists (such as myself), even we lay-people can understand that this finding represents a huge step forward in our understanding of the universe.

However, the response to the success at CERN amongst lay-people (in my anecdotal experience) has been mixed. The mix of responses is also evidenced in the various comments sections on online media reports (although that is not to suggest that this should be taken as a representative sample). Some people are hugely excited by the discovery. Others are completely apathetic. Somewhat tellingly, there was a meme doing the rounds on the internet on the day that the discovery was announced despairing of the fact that the top trending article on ‘yahoo’ that day had been about the adolescent pop-star Justin Bieber storming out of an interview, and not about the most important physics discovery of the century.

Particle physics and cosmology is not for everyone; we may lament the fact that some people are more interested in the inanities of the world of celebrity than in attempts to unravel the mystery of the universe, but it is not clear that this should cause us moral concern. However, one opinion that is frequently voiced in comments on reports of the discovery is that the whole endeavour to find the Higgs-Boson has been an outrageous waste of money. Such critics point out that during a time of global recession, it is morally irresponsible to spend vast amounts of money (something in the vicinity of £2.6 billion) on a purely theoretical experiment which is not designed to tackle any significant social problem or health concern.

I think that it is important to defend against this sort of opinion. Two arguments weigh against it; the first is applicable to only to scientific research, whilst the second is applicable to academic research broadly conceived.

The first point to make is that although scientific discoveries often lead to useful practical applications, these practical applications are not only often not the goal of the experiments which led to the discovery, but they are also not even foreseeable consequences. Of course, some of the scientists who have made world changing discoveries may have been attending to particular practical problems. For instance, even though Fleming discovered penicillin by accident, this accidental discovery occurred as part of his research to find a chemical that could stop bacterial infection, research that was motivated by his first hand experience of the devastating effects of such infection in WW1. However, as Nick Dusic, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, claims “Most researchers won’t know what the societal or economic benefit [of their research] will be until after [the research] has been done, and there could be unforeseeable benefits that weren’t anticipated when the research project started.”(What’s your research worth? – The Scientist – Magazine of the Life Sciences at http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55337/#ixzz1zqKeiZ64).

As such, it seems plausible to claim that many scientists are not motivated by a particular practical problem like Fleming; instead, it seems that they are driven by to conduct their experiments out of a spirit of scientific curiosity. However, although these experiments may not have been motivated by practical considerations, they may yet lead to practical applications which the researcher did not even dream of. Perhaps more importantly, it is the spirit of scientific curiosity which engenders creativity in science, and which will lead to the sort of revolutionary technologies that could potentially eradicate the social problems or health concerns that the critics of CERN highlight. The important point is that the fact that certain theoretical experiments are not carried out in the hope of providing some foreseeable practical benefit does not entail that no such benefit shall arise; we cannot tell what practical applications that the results at CERN may one day lead to.

The scientific knowledge obtained in theoretical experiments will thus often have instrumental value. However, the second reason that we should refrain from calling the experiment at CERN a waste of money is that there is a case for claiming that knowledge itself has intrinsic value, irrespective of the benefits that it may be instrumental to. There seems to be something to be said for the view that it is just a good to have knowledge about the way in which our universe works.

This sort of thought can be extended to other fields, including the one to which many of the contributors and subscribers of this blog belong to, namely philosophy. Philosophy and many other humanities subjects can seldom be said to have direct practical benefits in the same way that the natural sciences can have. In the economised societies that we live in, this leads many to attack these disciplines as worthless. How can knowledge or enquiry be a good if it will not lead to cures for cancer, more stable economies, or solutions to climate change? In reply, we might first point out the goals that the objector points out here are not intrinsic goods in themselves, but  instrumental; we would value a cure for cancer not as an end in itself, but rather because it would be a means to alleviating suffering, and prolong lives that we believe to be valuable. Accordingly, the successful accomplishment of these goals would be valuable in so far as they are a means to human well-being, which may plausibly be deemed intrinsically valuable. Now the knowledge attained in academic enquiries may be deemed as instrumental to well being on certain objectivist theories. However, it might also be plausible to claim that knowledge is just a different sort of intrinsic good from well being. Furthermore, to return to the natural sciences, it seems that it is this belief in the intrinsic value of knowledge that spurs the spirit of scientific curiosity, which, I suggested above, engenders the creativity in science, which is most fecund to the practical benefits that we often demand of it.

However, it does not seem to me that enquiry into the humanities should have any less intrinsic worth than theoretical enquiries in the natural sciences. Both enquiries can enrich human life not just because they make the world more intelligible to us, but also because they can alter the way in which we understand our existence. There is more to life than Justin Bieber leaving a radio interview early.

Academic enquiry can have instrumental value, and perhaps this is the easiest way in which we can justify publically funding it. But that should not make us lose sight of the idea that these enquiries might also have intrinsic value. The success at CERN should be celebrated and defended; the reception to it in some quarters should also give us in the humanities cause to consider the value of our particular enquiries.