Applied and fundamental research. Fundamental research methods

Directions of research, underlying the most diverse scientific disciplines that affect all determining conditions and patterns and direct absolutely all processes, are fundamental research.

Two types of research

Any area of knowledge that requires theoretical and experimental scientific research, the search for patterns that are responsible for the structure, shape, structure, composition, properties, as well as for the processes associated with them, is a fundamental science. This applies to the basic principles of most natural science and humanitarian disciplines. Fundamental research serves to broaden conceptual and theoretical ideas about the subject of study.

But there is another kind of knowledge of the subject. This is applied research, which is aimed at solving social and technical problems in a practical way. Science replenishes the objective knowledge of mankind about reality, developing their systematic systematization. Its purpose is to explain, describe and predict certain processes or phenomena, where it reveals laws and on their basis theoretically reflects reality. However, there are sciences aimed at the practical application of those postulates that provide fundamental research.

Subdivision

This division into applied and fundamental research is rather conditional, because the latter very often have high practical value, and on the basis of the former, scientific discoveries are often also obtained. Studying the basic laws and deriving general principles, scientists almost always have in mind the further use of their discoveries directly in practice, and it is not very important when it happens: melt the chocolate right now with the help of microwave radiation like Percy Spencer, or wait almost five hundred years From 1665 to flights to neighboring planets, like Giovanni Cassini with his discovery of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter.

The line between what are fundamental research and applied, almost illusory. Any new science first develops as a fundamental science, and then goes into practical solutions. For example, in quantum mechanics, which arose as an almost abstract branch of physics, no one at first saw anything useful, but in less than a decade, everything changed. Especially nuclear physics nobody expected so soon and so widely to use in practice. Applied and fundamental research are strongly interrelated, the latter are the foundation (foundation) for the former.

RFBR

Domestic science operates in a well-organized system, and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research occupies one of the most significant places in its structure. The RFBR covers all aspects of the scientific community that helps maintain the country's most active scientific and technical potential and provides scientists with financial support.

It should be specially noted that the Russian Foundation for Basic Research uses competitive mechanisms to finance domestic scientific research, and all experts are evaluated there, that is, the most respected members of the scientific community. The main task of the RFBR is to conduct a selection through a contest for the best scientific projects provided by scientists in an initiative order. Further on his part, the organizational and financial support of the winning projects is followed.

Spheres of support

The Foundation for Basic Research supports scientists in many areas of knowledge.

1. Informatics, mechanics, mathematics.

2. Astronomy and physics.

3. Materials science and chemistry.

4. Medical science and biology.

5. Earth sciences.

6. Science about man and society.

7. Computing systems and information technology.

8. Fundamentals of engineering sciences.

It is the support of the Foundation that is driven by domestic fundamental, applied research and development, so the theory and practice are mutually complementary. Only in their interaction is there a common scientific knowledge.

New directions

Fundamental and applied scientific research changes not only the basic models of cognition and the styles of scientific thinking, but also the whole scientific picture of the world. This is happening more and more, and the "culprits" to this are the new directions of fundamental research, unknown to you, which have been used ever since in the development of applied sciences ever since. If you carefully consider the history of physics, you can see a truly revolutionary transformation.

It is they who characterize the development of an increasing number of new directions in applied research and new technologies, which are due to the rapidly accelerating fundamental research. And ever faster they are embodied in real life. Dyson wrote that earlier it took 50-100 years from the fundamental discovery to large-scale technological applications. Now time seems to have shrunk: from the fundamental discovery to the introduction into production, the process takes place literally before our eyes. And all because the fundamental methods of research have changed.

Role of the RFFI

Initially, projects are selected on a competitive basis, then the order of consideration of all works submitted for the competition is developed and approved, and examination of the studies proposed for the competition is conducted. Next, funding is spent for selection of activities and projects with subsequent control over the use of allocated funds.

International cooperation in the sphere of basic scientific research is being established and supported, and financing of joint projects is included. The preparation and production of information materials on this activity are being carried out, and they are widely disseminated. The Fund actively participates in the formation of state policy in the scientific and technical area, which further reduces the path from fundamental research to the advent of technology.

The purpose of basic research

The development of science is always fixed by social transformations in public life. Technology is the main goal of every fundamental research, because it is precisely it that moves civilization, science and art forward. There are no scientific researches - there is no applied application, therefore, there are no technological transformations.

Further along the chain: the development of industry, the development of production, the development of society. In fundamental research, the whole structure of knowledge is laid down, which develops basic models of being. In classical physics, the initial basic model is the simplest ideas about atoms as the structure of matter plus the laws on the mechanics of a material point. Hence, physics began its development, generating all new basic models and increasingly complex ones.

Merger and separation

In the relationship between applied and fundamental research, the most important is the general process, the driving development of knowledge. Science is spreading more and more wide, each day complicating its already complicated structure, similar to a living highly organized entity. What is the similarity here? Any organism has many systems and subsystems. Some support the body in an active, active, living state - and only in this is their function. Others are aimed at interacting with the outside world, so to speak - on metabolism. In science, just as everything happens.

There are subsystems that support science in its active state, and there are others - they are guided by external scientific manifestations, as it were, include it in extraneous activities. Fundamental research is aimed at the interests and needs of science, to support its functions, and this is achieved through the development of methods of cognition and generalizing ideas, which are the basis of being. This is what is meant by the term "pure science" or "knowledge for the sake of knowledge". Applied research is always directed outwards, they assimilate theory with the practical activity of man, that is, with production, thus changing the world.

Feedback

New fundamental sciences are also being developed on the basis of applied research, although this process is interfaced with the difficulties of the theoretical cognitive plan. Usually in fundamental research contains a lot of applications, and it is impossible to guess at which of them the next breakthrough in the development of theoretical knowledge will occur. An example can serve as an interesting situation, which is now taking shape in physics. Its leading fundamental theory in the field of microprocesses is quantum theory.

It radically changed the entire way of thinking in the physical sciences of the twentieth century. She has a huge number of diverse applications, each of which attempts to "pocket" the entire legacy of this section of theoretical physics. And already many in this way have succeeded. Applications of quantum theory one by one create independent directions of fundamental research: solid-state physics, elementary particles, as well as physics with astronomy, physics with biology, and much is yet to come. How can one not conclude that quantum mechanics has radically changed physical thinking.

Development of directions

The history of science is extremely rich in the development of fundamental research directions. This is the classical mechanics that reveals the basic properties and regularities of macrotel motion, and thermodynamics with its initial laws of thermal processes, and electrodynamics with electromagnetic processes, quantum mechanics has already been said a few words, and how much it would have to tell about genetics! And this is far from finished a long series of new directions in fundamental research.

The most interesting thing is that almost every new fundamental science led to a powerful surge in various applied research, and practically all spheres were covered. As soon as the same classical mechanics, for example, acquired its foundations, it intensively began to be used in studies of various systems and objects. Hence the mechanics of continuous media, mechanics of solids, hydromechanics and many other directions. Or take a new direction - the organism, the development of which deals with a special academy of fundamental research.

Convergence

Analysts say that academic and industrial studies of recent decades have significantly converged, and for this reason, the share of fundamental research in private universities and business structures has increased. The technological order of knowledge merges with the academic one, since the latter is associated with the creation and processing, theory and production of knowledge, without which neither search, nor ordering, nor the use of already available knowledge for applied purposes is possible.

Each science with its fundamental research has the most significant impact on the worldview of modern society, changing even the basic concepts of philosophical thinking. Science today must have guidelines in the future, as far as possible. Forecasts, of course, can not be rigid, but development scenarios must be developed. One of them is necessarily realized. Here the main thing is the potential consequences to calculate. Let us recall the creators of the atomic bomb. In the studies of the most unknown, the most complex, the most interesting, progress inevitably moves forward. It is important to correctly determine the goal.