Brian Cox: humanities research is ‘absolutely vital’

Britain’s best-known scientist, Brian Cox, has made an impassioned plea for the importance of supporting fundamental research across a range of disciplines, arguing it is impossible to know where the next transformational breakthrough will arise.

Addressing Times Higher Education’s World Academic Summit, Professor Cox told an audience at the University of Manchester that he was continually amazed at how research in areas with apparently little practical use often yielded huge benefits for society.

However, it was challenging to explain to the public – and to politicians – how the process of research worked, and why it should be funded.

“What we are doing in our industry, though I wouldn’t want explain it like this to the Treasury, is that we have a load of people who are just paid to wander around on the edge of the known…that’s our job,” said the Oldham-born scientist, who is professor of particle physics and Royal Society professor for public engagement in science at Manchester, though is best known for his popular BBC science shows.

“You wander around on these random walks and occasionally those random walks will lead to random things which will transform civilisations – there are so many examples, Faraday, pencillin,” he explained, adding: “The most important thing of all is to explain how we [as academics] acquire or arrive at knowledge.

“That can be discussed with the Large Hadron Collider, which might seem esoteric – the search for the Higgs boson – or you might talk about the use of AI on medical research, which is more useful,” he said.

“As an aside, my remaining PhD student here at the University of Manchester – I share the supervision – is funded by an information technology company but he works on black holes. You might say this is the most esoteric thing – why would anyone want to know about a completely collapsed star, other than the pure joy of it – but it turns out in the last 10 years that the questions raised about black holes, initially by Stephen Hawking in the 1970s, are questions of information and quantum information.

“So, the techniques that are being developed to answer questions about black holes are the same techniques you need when you are trying to programme quantum computers. Suddenly there is a knowledge transfer within the same discipline – who would have known that?” said Professor Cox, whose latest BBC series Solar System begins this week.

Those conversations were often difficult to have with politicians given justifiable concerns over the use of taxpayers’ money, but they were nonetheless important, he said.

“If you’d have said, ‘Give us money to study collapsed stars, it will help with something,’ then people would have laughed at you. But we have to admit that we are not smart enough – nobody is smart enough – to know where you can invest your money in order to make profound changes in society.  No one is clever enough – not because we do not try hard enough, it is just too difficult,” he said.

While admitting the case for funding scientific research was easier to make, Professor Cox insisted that it was “absolutely vital” to fund research in other disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences, to continue efforts to understand the universe.

Drawing on his recent collaboration with a 100-piece symphony orchestra, Professor Cox said the importance of the arts and creative subjects was crucial in helping us understand our lives.

“Cosmology raises some profound philosophical questions about our place in the universe…what does it mean to live a finite fragile life in an infinite and eternal universe? Science does not give you the answer to that – it does not tell you what the discovery of 400 billion suns in the Milky Way galaxy means. If there is some answer to this question, it is, as Plato said, we can shine light on the shadows – science gives us a necessary but not sufficient light [to do this].”

Without a broad range of research disciplines being funded, it might not be possible to make those breakthrough discoveries, he concluded.

“Are you smart enough to invest research money? Are you smart enough to know which discipline to switch off without damaging research?” he said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com