"The day when the scientist, no matter how devoted, may make significant progress alone and without material help is past. This fact is most self-evident in our work"
About this Quote
Gone is the romantic myth of the lone genius in a drafty lab, and Lawrence is blunt about who killed it: modern science itself. By the time he’s speaking, physics has stopped being a discipline you can advance with a notebook and a clever apparatus. It’s become an industrial enterprise of magnets, power supplies, glassblowing shops, machinists, grants, and institutional backing - the kind of infrastructure his own cyclotron demanded. “No matter how devoted” is doing quiet work here: devotion, that old moral currency of scientific virtue, can’t substitute for capital.
The line also smuggles in a political argument. Lawrence isn’t only describing a reality; he’s legitimizing a new social contract in which scientists deserve material support because their work is inseparable from the state, universities, and increasingly, military priorities. “Most self-evident in our work” narrows the claim to his domain - big physics - but it doubles as a persuasive move: if the need is self-evident, the funding conversation should be over.
The subtext is managerial as much as philosophical. Lawrence helped invent “Big Science,” with teams, hierarchies, budgets, and timelines. So the quote reads like a pivot point: science as solitary calling giving way to science as collective production. It’s not nostalgia; it’s an enlistment pitch, dressed as realism, for a world where discovery runs on collaboration and payroll.
The line also smuggles in a political argument. Lawrence isn’t only describing a reality; he’s legitimizing a new social contract in which scientists deserve material support because their work is inseparable from the state, universities, and increasingly, military priorities. “Most self-evident in our work” narrows the claim to his domain - big physics - but it doubles as a persuasive move: if the need is self-evident, the funding conversation should be over.
The subtext is managerial as much as philosophical. Lawrence helped invent “Big Science,” with teams, hierarchies, budgets, and timelines. So the quote reads like a pivot point: science as solitary calling giving way to science as collective production. It’s not nostalgia; it’s an enlistment pitch, dressed as realism, for a world where discovery runs on collaboration and payroll.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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