“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”
When Adam Smith wrote those lines in 1755, his native Britain was among the world’s wealthiest nations. By avoiding costly foreign wars, Britain’s prime minister Robert Walpole (in office 1721–42) and his Whig successors could afford to levy low taxes. Trial by jury, habeas corpus, and other aspects of the rule of law had abided in Britain for centuries.
In the 21st century, the countries with the highest GDP per capita, bar a handful of oil-rich monarchies, are all democracies. Smith’s three requisites for prosperity are more likely to be satisfied in a democracy—because voters want peace, moderate taxes, and the rule of law. But as the examples of Shenzhen, Suzhou, and other wealthy Chinese cities attest, democracy is not essential for prosperity.
Nor is democracy essential for science to flourish. The Soviet Union was a physics powerhouse, as was the German Empire under its kaisers and chancellors. When Hideki Yukawa published his theory of mesons in 1935, Japan’s chief executive was Keisuke Okada, an admiral serving in the Imperial Japanese Navy.
What are the requisites for cultivating science? Education is surely among them. But it’s impossible and futile to identify which children might become scientists. All children should be given the opportunity to follow an educational path that leads, through school and university, to a career in science. And when someone takes that path, they should not face obstacles or hostility on account of who they are.
Adequate research funding is another requisite. Hong Kong’s universities began producing abundant world-class research only after the territory’s government recognized in the 1980s that its aspiration to become a center of higher education excellence in South China would require funding competitively selected grant proposals. “Adequate,” though, is a squishy term. It means, I propose, that scientists face an encouraging prospect of their grant proposals being funded.
The ability to share one’s research with peers is another requisite. Satisfying it doesn’t necessarily mean publishing in peer-reviewed journals. As historian of science Melinda Baldwin has demonstrated, peer review did not become a standard feature of scientific publishing until the Cold War.1 Still, journals of some kind are needed.
Scientists also need time to think. Teaching multiple courses, serving on multiple committees and panels, reviewing papers and grant proposals, worrying about career advancement—all those demands stifle creative thought. Lack of time was a complaint I heard from physicists in China when I visited the country in 2008 and 2009. “I keep having to go to meetings in Beijing,” one Nanjing-based physicist told me. (The two cities are roughly 1000 km apart.)
Does freedom from political influence qualify as a requisite? In Norway, the country that the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked in 2019 as the world’s most democratic, politicians ultimately determine funding priorities. The Research Council of Norway has three open proposal requests for new centers. One is for 11 centers of excellence in any field. The other two bear the stamp of politically mediated priorities: green wind power and special-needs education. Insofar as citizens should have a say in what science their taxes fund, political influence is inevitable and even desirable.
What’s not acceptable is undermining confidence in science itself for political gain. President Trump has repeatedly dismissed climate change as a “hoax,” even as Earth’s temperature rises and forest fires, hurricanes, and flooding become more frequent and more damaging. Politics, not science, continues to drive his administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic at a rising cost of avoidable deaths.
In discounting virology, epidemiology, and public health science, Trump is not alone among world leaders. President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus urged his fellow citizens to combat COVID-19 by playing ice hockey, attending public steam baths, driving tractors, and drinking vodka.
Unlike Lukashenko, Trump faces the prospect of being voted out of office. As a proponent of democracy, I accepted his victory in 2016. Even if you disagree with his policies, Trump’s tough stance on trade with China and his prodding of NATO countries to shoulder more of the cost of their own defense are rational and defensible. His denial of science is not.
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