In 1829, Edgar Allan Poe penned "Sonnet to Science." In it, he expresses his frustration with what he sees as the inverse relationship between scientific progress and the ability of humanity to dream. He seemed to think that science reduced the beauty of reality by condensing our observations into facts, maybe because he also thought that poetry uncovered another layer of possibly unobservable reality, and science was a competitor for it. Mr. Poe, I'm a huge fan of your work and imma let you finish and all, but...no.
Science is crucial to the modern world - without it, I wouldn't be typing these words on a computer with no lag between me pressing the keys and the words showing up on the screen, connected to a vast, global network of information exchange, with a little blue bubble showing up every time I pause typing telling me my article is saved, and with it, my thoughts. Without it, I wouldn't be inside a temperature-controlled building that has electricity, running water, and lots of other amenities. Not only the amenities in our lives which we are lucky enough to have, but the bare minimum would not exist. We wouldn't have modern medicine, energy technology, or resource management. We wouldn't have food security--we still don't in many parts of the world.
And because of that--because even though we've come so far, we still have so much further to go--is why still need science. There's no such thing as knowing enough; we can and should always be striving to know more. To do this tangibly, we need resources, and funding for those resources. Where does this funding come from? One place is the national scientific budget.
Sometimes, when sitting alone in my apartment eating cereal out of a mug at 6 pm and doing more integrals than I thought humanly possible, it's hard to imagine myself having anything in common with lawmakers in Congress. But it turns out I do! When it comes to science, we all want nothing more than to ignore our current president's...opinions. For the second year in a row, members of Congress seem to have just ignored Donald Trump's depressingly steep cuts to the scientific budget, and this year, we are instead set to see an overall increase.
The Omnibus spending bill passed in Congress last week gave The National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DoE), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), US Geological Survey (USGS), US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and NASA substantial increases in their budget - in fact, the largest increase seen in over a decade! The NIH received $3 billion more than last year, putting them at a historic high of $37 billion, the NSF received $295 million more than it did last year, and NASA got an extra $1.1 billion this year.
These increases are fantastic in and of themselves because of the opportunities they provide for scientific researchers, translating directly to the opportunities provided for the advancement of science. But these increases are even more fantastic when we consider what could have been under trump's budget. it could be compared to a slasher movie, except instead of people, it's just people's dreams. this man wanted to cut funds left right and center across every scientific agency but the beauty of democracy stopped him.
Tragically, there is one notable exception to this otherwise unbelievably fortunate trend. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not received any additional funding this year. However, constant funding might actually be a good thing considering Trump wanted to slash the EPA's budget by 30%.
Omnibus is great and provides young scientists like me a glimmer of hope for the future. Without this spending bill, the remnants of the scientific budget would have been like something out of a slasher film--except with gutted resources instead of fake guts. We still have so much more to discover--by we, I mean humans, not just us nerdy scientists--and we need support to do so. I'm glad we have it this year, but let's not get too comfortable. If you care about literally any stuff science has contributed to the development of that stuff. I think it's important for all of us to take ownership of our interests and make sure that we can pursue them to contribute more to this overwhelming, interesting, poetic world we live in. And with that, here's a revised Sonnet to Science, written by a scientist in the year 2018:
Science! We need you and you're super rad!
Thanks for modern medicine.
Vaccines don't cause autism,
Do you see why we need critical thinking skills?
How do we develop these? what in the world,
Through the scientific method
Which lets us unlock the mysteries of the universe,
HOW DO YOU NOT FIND THAT AMAZING?
Don't you like being able to use special relativity,
While navigating with Google Maps on your phone
To get some delicious gelato?
Isn't science simply the language of the universe
That we live in too,
And should try to understand?
