Apply Topics

The Sceptic being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the Dogmatists. So, just as the physicians who cure bodity ailments have remedies which differ in strength, and apply the severe ones to those whose ailments are severe and the milder to those mildly affected—so too the Sceptic propounds arguments which differ in strength, and employs those which are weighty and capable by their stringency of disposing of the Dogmatists’ ailment, self-conceit, in cases where the mischief is due to a severe attack of rashness, which he employs the milder arguments in the case of those whose ailment is superficial and easy to cure, and whom it is possible to restore to health by milder methods of persuasion.
—Sextus Empiricus (2nd or 3rd cent., A.D.)

This is the element that distinguishes applied science from basic. Surprise is what makes the difference. When you are organized to apply knowledge, set up targets, produce a usable product, you require a high degree of certainty from the outset. All the facts on which you base protocols must be reasonably hard facts with unambiguous meaning. The challenge is to plan the work and organize the workers so that it will come out precisely as predicted. For this, you need centralized authority, elaborately detailed time schedules, and some sort of reward system based on speed and perfection. But most of all you need the intelligible basic facts to begin with, and these must come from basic research. There is no other source. In basic research, everything is just the opposite. What you need at the outset is a high degree of uncertainty; otherwise it isn’t likely to be an important problem. You start with an incomplete roster of facts, characterized by their ambiguity; often the problem consists of discovering the connections between unrelated pieces of information. You must plan experiments on the basis of probability, even bare possibility, rather than certainty.
—Lewis Thomas (b. 1913)

The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.
—James Thurber (1894–1961)