Remarks: Governor Philip Bredesen

Thank you Dr. Holtkamp for that introduction. And thank you for the invitation to be with all of you this morning; I'm honored to be in this company and to have the chance to offer a welcome and a few thoughts.

Dr. Holtkamp, you were kind to reference my connection to this field. It is becoming more tenuous all the time. Charlie Sinclair and I have kept up our friendship over the years (it was Charlie who issued the invitation to come here today) and I follow it slightly through him. But to give you an idea about how distant my connection is, my first job in the field was working for Don Edwards (Dr. Edwards to me) evaluating power series on a Marchant calculator.

It was there that I learned the important life lesson that it is very difficult to get the same answer two times in a row.

I'd like to do two things this morning; to simply act as a good host and welcome all of you to Tennessee and Knoxville, and then if you'll indulge a personal comment or two to talk just a little bit about the intersection of politics and science from someone who has spent a little time in each. First, I want to join my friends Jeff Wadsworth at the national lab and John Petersen of the University of Tennessee in welcoming all of you to Tennessee and to Knoxville. Thank you for choosing us for this occasion, and I hope very much that you will have the chance to enjoy Knoxville and Oak Ridge and see a little of our state while you are here. The Smoky Mountains just to the east of here are one of the most beautiful places on our planet, and if your time permits you to see them, I hope you will do so.

The intersection of politics and science.

I've lived in the world of politics for over a decade now, and have certainly developed some views about what is right and what is wrong with our public process. I've always thought that part of the genius of America is that we got so many of the fundamentals right, and as I stand here today as governor of one of our states, I'm concerned that we are losing track of what is really fundamental (what are the beams and joists and what is just trim and gingerbread.

What I am about to say is doubtless preaching to the choir here today, but I believe that leadership in science, in basic scientific research, is fundamental, and I'm concerned that we're losing it, particularly in the physical sciences. I certainly appreciate the international nature of much scientific endeavor (I understand that almost half of the attendees here today are from other nations (but for a nation in the economic position of the United States to be steadily and measurably shrinking in its commitment relative to the rest of the world is incredibly shortsighted. To build big science projects and then starve them financially is economically silly, to depend on other nations to provide a substantial part of America's scientists and engineers is just plain scary.

How do we start to restore the importance of basic scientific research to our priorities? I want to assert to you that we (you as members of the scientific community and me as representative of politicians who believe in the importance of science (that we are doing an inadequate job of explaining outside of your community why what you do is important.

And I want to assert to you that in the end, the only real security for our nation's commitment to research is a belief on the part of ordinary citizens that it is an important thing for America to do.

After all, in the end, it is those bricklayers and steelworkers and small business owners who are paying for it.

I mentioned earlier that I used to work for Don Edwards at Cornell, and I have always remembered something he told me about physics: that people who truly understand something, who truly have command of a subject can explain it at some level to anyone who asks and is willing to try to understand an answer. His point was that if you were asked about something and had to resort to that's all very complicated and until you take a course in differential equations and then give me a blackboard I can't possibly make you understand (that that was more often a signal of a failure of the physicist to have a real command of the issue than of the failure of the person asking the question.

The years have only confirmed to me that he was completely right in this, and the way that I have adapted it to my own life is the "Wal-Mart Test." When I propose to take some course of action in the public sector, I do a thought experiment and imagine how I will explain it to the Wal-Mart checkout person. Let me clear that I don't mean in any way dumbing-down the idea, I mean taking Don Edwards' principle that if I understand well enough what I am doing, I can cogently explain it to another human being with a different reference point. If I can successfully do this thought experiment, I have the makings of a plan.

That's what we have to do to reconnect the public and through them reconnect the political process with the value of basic scientific research. Big science has had a great run for the last 60 years: Manhattan project, Sputnik and space exploration, the explosion and excitement of particle physics and accelerator science; the rationale was obvious and easy. But those rationales are getting long in the tooth now, and need to be reinvigorated.

Regardless of whether the next President or the next Congress is Democrat or Republican, the reality is that resources are scarce, the reality is that big science needs resources that only the government can supply, and the reality is that those scarce resources will go to those things that ordinary citizens think are important to themselves and to their children and to our nation. That's our job, to remake that connection in the 21st century.

There's nothing wrong or demeaning in this; even Michelangelo had patrons who had a seat at the table and needed to be satisfied.

So here's a Wal-Mart-type thought experiment for you: you've returned home, and run into an acquaintance (not a scientist) in the grocery store.

"Where have you been?" ­ "A scientific conference in Tennessee"

"Why was it there?" ­ "The SNS is about to be completed in Oak Ridge"

Here's the first hard one: "What is the SNS?" No fair answering it by expanding the acronym.

And the really important one: "Why are they building it?" No fair using a self-referential answer; "because research is very very very important" isn't it. "Why are they building it?"

My thesis today is this: when thousands of scientists pay attention to answering questions like these (in the respectful Don Edwards way) to millions of ordinary American citizens, then we will start turning things around.

# # # # #

Please have a productive accelerator conference, thank you for choosing Tennessee, and thank you for indulging a few personal thoughts from someone who loves science and loves and works for Wal-Mart clerks and would like for these friends of mine to get better acquainted for the benefit of both.