Politics & Power Quote by Joshua Lederberg

Against the constant pressure to justify research like a line item, Lederberg quietly insists that science earns its keep by being interesting. "I'd like to put in a vote" sounds almost parliamentary, even modest: not a manifesto, a procedural nudge in a room where the loudest voices are usually budgets, patents, or national priorities. The phrasing is strategic. He is asking permission to defend curiosity in a culture that increasingly treats curiosity as a luxury.

The key word is "intrinsic". Lederberg is pushing back on the idea that science matters only when it yields a vaccine, a weapon, or a product demo. Coming from a geneticist who helped legitimize molecular biology and later advised on biosecurity, the line carries a telling tension: this is a man intimately familiar with science's real-world consequences, still choosing to advocate for the pleasure and pull of the unknown. That subtext matters. He is not naive about application; he is worried about a system that makes application the only acceptable alibi.

"Intrinsic fascination" also smuggles in a moral claim without sounding moralistic. Fascination is how people enter science in the first place; it's the engine of attention, the willingness to stare at a problem long enough for it to yield. Lederberg frames wonder as infrastructure. In the Cold War and postwar period that shaped his career, public funding often demanded clear utility. His "vote" is a reminder that the breakthroughs we later label "useful" are usually born from questions that began as nothing more defensible than obsession.