"A powerful attraction exists, therefore, to the promotion of a study and of duties of all others engrossing the time most completely, and which is less benefited than most others by any acquaintance with science"
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Charles Babbage points to a mismatch between incentives and the public good. Where prestige, promotion, and income favor studies and offices that devour all one’s time and gain little from scientific knowledge, talented people will rationally flock there. The result is not moral failure but a systemic drift: society rewards pursuits that are eloquent, ceremonial, or administrative, while the slow, exacting labor of experiment and analysis is left understaffed and underappreciated.
The language reflects early nineteenth-century Britain, where classical education, law, politics, and the church dominated elite pathways. Universities lavished attention on Latin and Greek; preferment and honor flowed through social networks and public duties; the Royal Society, in Babbage’s view, had grown complacent. In such a climate, acquaintance with science did little to help a career in Parliament or the pulpit, and the responsibilities of those roles left no time for research. That feedback loop shaped curricula and policy, further marginalizing scientific inquiry.
Babbage’s complaint is practical rather than merely cultural. When gifted minds spend their prime in roles insulated from scientific methods, the opportunity cost is immense. Fewer instruments are designed, fewer principles tested, fewer industrial improvements realized. A commercial nation forfeits competitive advantage; a curious nation stunts its own curiosity. He wanted institutions that align rewards with discovery: appointments based on scientific merit, secure support for researchers, and a separation of ceremonial prestige from the governance of science so that administrators do not crowd out investigators.
The sentence also anticipates a perennial problem. When the most crowded, time-consuming careers are the ones least enriched by science, public discourse grows less empirical, policy less informed, and education more ornamental than useful. The warning endures: arrange honors and incentives so that acquaintance with science is not a luxury or an eccentricity, but a path to service, influence, and national progress.
The language reflects early nineteenth-century Britain, where classical education, law, politics, and the church dominated elite pathways. Universities lavished attention on Latin and Greek; preferment and honor flowed through social networks and public duties; the Royal Society, in Babbage’s view, had grown complacent. In such a climate, acquaintance with science did little to help a career in Parliament or the pulpit, and the responsibilities of those roles left no time for research. That feedback loop shaped curricula and policy, further marginalizing scientific inquiry.
Babbage’s complaint is practical rather than merely cultural. When gifted minds spend their prime in roles insulated from scientific methods, the opportunity cost is immense. Fewer instruments are designed, fewer principles tested, fewer industrial improvements realized. A commercial nation forfeits competitive advantage; a curious nation stunts its own curiosity. He wanted institutions that align rewards with discovery: appointments based on scientific merit, secure support for researchers, and a separation of ceremonial prestige from the governance of science so that administrators do not crowd out investigators.
The sentence also anticipates a perennial problem. When the most crowded, time-consuming careers are the ones least enriched by science, public discourse grows less empirical, policy less informed, and education more ornamental than useful. The warning endures: arrange honors and incentives so that acquaintance with science is not a luxury or an eccentricity, but a path to service, influence, and national progress.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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