One of history’s dark jokes is that the Roman Empire, for all its vaunted accomplishments, only made a single great “contribution” to science: the killing of Archimedes. Today the U.S. risks suffering the same kind of shame.
In 212 B.C.E. the Romans sacked the city of Syracuse after a prolonged siege, and a Roman soldier killed Archimedes, then the greatest living mathematician, physicist and engineer—and one of the greatest minds of all time. Exact accounts vary, but according to one, Archimedes was engrossed in sketching a problem in sand when his murderer arrived, sword drawn. Covering his work, the mathematician said, “I beg of you, do not disturb this.” In response, the soldier struck down the 72-year-old man.
American science now faces another sharpened edge. The Trump administration stands with its own sword drawn. It’s choking our universities. It’s stamping out the free flow of ideas. It’s cutting funding to basic science. It’s ready to make the killing blow, all in the name of making America great again.
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Despite declines since the COVID pandemic, science remains one of the most trusted and most well regarded institutions in the U.S. And while modern science has many flaws, it is one of those few things we can point to as a society and say that this, this, is what already makes us great.
Our technological and scientific prowess is the envy of the world, unmatched across the globe and indeed throughout human history. No other country, no other culture, no other civilization has matched what the U.S. has poured into fundamental research in the years since World War II. After the stunning success of the Manhattan Project, political leaders in the U.S. learned what the rulers of ancient Syracuse already knew: wise nations invest in their most brilliant minds.
Last year the U.S. government funded about $90 billion of nondefense research. And for the relatively paltry sum of close to a hundred billion dollars—essentially a rounding error in total federal outlays—repeated year after year for decades, we have miracles made manifest: cures and treatments, consisting of a few milliliters of molecules, to balm the worst of our diseases; machines that breathe fire to take us to the stars; devices, held in our hands, that connect us to friends, family and strangers a world away. Chances are that all those marvels, great and small, can trace their roots to publicly supported research.
It’s easy enough to point to the monetary benefits of scientific research—and the immediate harms that will be done if the administration’s proposed cuts go through. One dollar of National Institutes of Health research funding produces $2.56 in economic activity. Cutting annual research funding in half would save the American taxpayer $260 this year—and cost them $10,000 in future wealth. Federal funding of nondefense research has accounted for about 20 percent of our nation’s business productivity growth since World War II.
In addition, although the majority of trainees in science do not end up following a career as a researcher, they go on to add value to a wide variety of organizations, including businesses and government agencies. Science takes our best and brightest and throws them into the crucible, pitting them against the toughest problems known to humanity, and then sets them loose to solve the everyday challenges of our modern economy.
But the true greatness of our achievements is in the intangibles—not in what we construct but in what we perceive.
We have built telescopes to peer back through deep cosmic time and see the dim, faded light of the first galaxies to emerge in the heavens.
We have developed electronic machines to mimic our own intelligent speech and, in doing so, allow us to wrestle with the nature of our own humanity.
We have set ourselves to a great mission of conquest—not of a people or a rival nation but of the scourge of cancer.
We have had the courage to look into our history, our own communities, our own social connections and ask uncomfortable questions and reveal painful truths.
Is this not what great nations do? They don’t just build bridges and roads and monuments of stone and steel. They erect edifices of the intellect. They place their stamp on history. They create gifts to be enjoyed by generations yet to come. They become beacons that future civilizations emulate.
Americans have long held themselves to be different than people in other nations. French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, the great observer of early American life, wrote in his book Democracy in America that “the position of the Americans is therefor quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.” Our modern institution of science is one our country’s truly exceptional achievements.
This is why fundamental science is worthy of public funding. No private enterprise would ever dare sacrifice profits to study the arcane corners of the universe. No single patron, no matter how wealthy, can provide the funding necessary to slake our thirst for answers. Only nations—great nations—can afford to take a slim measure of the public’s treasury and devote it to science.
Science is part of what makes us noble. It demonstrates our abilities to the world and to history. It is a projection of our strength. Look at us, we say to the world, so wealthy and wise that we set our sights farther, our minds deeper. It’s here, in this nation, that we will produce works that will stand the test of time.
The minuscule savings achieved from the proposed cuts to science research won’t be felt in the average taxpayer’s pocketbook. But the cuts will hurt us. They will hurt us now and for generations to come. That is the bitter reality that we are now facing: that we are deliberately making our children impoverished—materially and intellectually—in the name of insignificant savings today.
The proposed budget cuts kill all of this—the learning; the advancement; the courage; the powerhouse of American ingenuity; and one of the pillars that we can stand on to rightly claim our place in history as a great nation.
How will our descendants remember us and this moment? Will they view us as a people that dared mighty things—or as so much blood in the sand? Go ahead, strike down science if you will. But remember this: The name of Archimedes echoes through the centuries. The name of the solider who killed him does not.
I beg of you, do not disturb this.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.