Science

Back in the time of Archimedes, and right through Galileo, Benjamin Franklin,  Isaac Newton, and Darwin, it was possible for a lone investigator to make important scientific discoveries with easily affordable apparatus, or just by thinking. Scientists were mostly people of means, who had the leisure to pursue science essentially as a hobby, and perhaps spend small sums on experimental gadgetry. We still think of Albert Einstein as the archetypal scientists, a lone genius who developed profound insights while working at a fairly menial job. The only reward for these intellectual pioneers was fame, and in Einstein ' s case a professorship. Galileo ' s reward was prison. While many of their discoveries had economic value almost immediately, and all did in the long run, none of it went into  their pockets because nobody owns basic knowledge. Patentable technology is fundamentally different. It seldom consists of or incorporates new scientific discoveries. Rather, it takes advantage of known phenomena in new ways. For example, when Newcomen and Watt developed the first commercially useful steam engines, everybody knew that heated water turned into steam that expanded and could be used to push a cylinder. They just hadn ' t assembled all the parts successfully.Scientific discovery makes new technologies possible, but there is seldom incentive to invest in basic scientific research because even if you did end up making some sort of patentable discovery -- which the th...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs