The directions of research that underlie the most diverse scientific disciplines, which affect all the determining conditions and patterns and guide absolutely all processes, are fundamental research.
Two types of research
Any field of knowledge that requires theoretical and experimental scientific research, the search for patterns 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 sciences and the humanities. Basic research serves to expand the conceptual and theoretical ideas about the subject of study.
But there is another kind of knowledge of the subject. This is applied researchaimed at solving social and technical problems in a practical way. Science replenishes the objective knowledge of mankind about reality, developing their theoretical systematization. Its purpose is to explain, describe and predict certain processes or phenomena, where it discovers laws and theoretically reflects reality on their basis. However, there are sciences aimed at the practical application of those postulates that fundamental research provides.
Department
This division into applied and fundamental research is rather conditional, because the latter very often have a high practical value, and on the basis of the former, scientific discoveries are also quite often obtained. Studying the basic patterns and deriving general principles, scientists almost always have in mind the further application of their discoveries directly into practice, and it doesn’t really matter when this happens: melt chocolate right now with 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 fundamental and applied research is almost illusory. Any new science first develops as fundamental, and then moves into practical solutions. For example, in quantum mechanics, which arose as a kind of almost abstract branch of physics, no one saw anything useful at first, but not even a decade had passed before everything changed. Moreover, no one assumed nuclear physicsso soon and so widely used in practice. Applied and fundamental research are strongly interconnected, the latter being the basis (foundation) for the former.
RFBR
Domestic science works 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 activities of the scientific community, which contributes to maintaining the most active scientific and technical potential of the country 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 works are evaluated there by real experts, that is, the most respected members of the scientific community. The main task of the RFBR is to conduct selection through a competition for the best scientific projects submitted by scientists on their own initiative. Further, on his part, the organizational and financial support of the projects that won the competition follows.
Support Areas
The Fund for Basic Research supports scientists in many areas of knowledge.
1. Computer science, mechanics, mathematics.
2. Astronomy and physics.
3. Materials Science and Chemistry.
4. Medical science and biology.
5. Geosciences.
6. Human and social sciences.
7. Computing systems andinformation technology.
8. Fundamentals of engineering sciences.
It is the Foundation's support that drives domestic fundamental and applied research and development, so theory and practice complement each other. Only in their interaction is there a common scientific knowledge.
New destinations
Fundamental and applied scientific research is changing not only the basic models of cognition and styles of scientific thinking, but also the entire scientific picture of the world. This is happening more and more often, and the “culprits” for this are new areas of fundamental research that were not known to anyone yesterday, which century by century are increasingly finding their application in the development of applied sciences. If you look closely at the history of physics, you can see a truly revolutionary transformation.
They are the ones that characterize the development of an increasing number of new directions in applied research and new technologies, which are due to the rapidly gaining momentum in fundamental research. And more and more quickly they are embodied in real life. Dyson wrote that it used to take 50-100 years to go from a fundamental discovery to large-scale technological applications. Now time seems to have compressed: from a fundamental discovery to implementation in production, the process takes place literally before our eyes. And all because the very fundamental methods of research have changed.
The role of RFBR
First heldselection of projects on a competitive basis, then the procedure for consideration of all works submitted for the competition is developed and approved, an examination of the research proposed for the competition is carried out. Further, the financing of the selected events and projects is carried out with subsequent control over the use of the allocated funds.
International cooperation in the field of scientific fundamental research is being established and supported, this includes the financing of joint projects. Information materials on this activity are being prepared and published, and they are widely distributed. The Foundation is actively involved in the formation of state policy in the scientific and technical field, which further shortens the path from basic research to the emergence of technology.
The purpose of fundamental research
The development of science is always secured by social transformations in public life. Technology is the main goal of every fundamental research, since it is it that moves civilization, science and art forward. No scientific research - no application, therefore, no technological transformation.
Further along the chain: the development of industry, the development of production, the development of society. Fundamental research contains the entire structure of cognition, which develops the 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 of the mechanics of a material point. From here, physics began its development, giving rise to ever new basicmodels and increasingly complex.
Merge and split
In the relationship between applied and fundamental research, the most important is the overall process that drives the development of knowledge. Science is advancing on an ever broader front, every day complicating its already complex structure, similar to a highly organized living entity. What is the resemblance 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 - at metabolism. In science, the same thing happens.
There are subsystems that support science itself in an active state, and there are others - they are guided by external scientific manifestations, as if including it in extraneous activities. Fundamental research is aimed at the interests and needs of science, at supporting 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 concept of "pure science" or "knowledge for the sake of knowledge." Applied research is always directed outward, they assimilate theory with practical human activity, that is, with production, thus changing the world.
Feedback
New fundamental sciences are also developed on the basis of applied research, although this process is fraught with difficulties of a theoretical cognitive plan. Usually infundamental research contains a lot of applications, and it is completely impossible to predict which of them will lead to the next breakthrough in the development of theoretical knowledge. An example is the interesting situation that is taking shape in physics today. Its leading fundamental theory in the field of microprocesses is quantum.
She radically changed the whole way of thinking in the physical sciences of the twentieth century. It has a huge number of various applications, each of which tries to "pocket" the entire legacy of this section of theoretical physics. And many have already succeeded on this path. Applications of quantum theory, one after another, create independent areas of fundamental research: solid state physics, elementary particles, as well as physics with astronomy, physics with biology, and much more 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 areas. These are classical mechanics, which reveals the basic properties and laws of motion of macrobodies, and thermodynamics with its initial laws of thermal processes, and electrodynamics with electromagnetic processes, a few words have already been said about quantum mechanics, but how much should be said about genetics! And this is far from being the end of a long series of new areas of fundamental research.
The most interesting thing is that almost every new fundamentalscience led to a powerful surge of various applied research, and almost all areas of knowledge were covered. As soon as the same classical mechanics, for example, acquired its foundations, they began to apply it intensively in the studies of various systems and objects. From here came the mechanics of continuous media, mechanics of solids, hydromechanics and many other areas. Or take a new direction - organismics, which is being developed by a special academy of fundamental research.
Convergence
Analysts say that academic and industrial research in recent decades have converged significantly, 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 the search, nor the ordering, nor the use of existing 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 for the future, as far as possible. Forecasts, of course, cannot be rigid, but development scenarios must be developed. One of them must be implemented. The main thing here is to calculate the potential consequences. Consider the creators of the atomic bomb. In the research of all the most unknown, the most complex, the mostinteresting progress inevitably moves forward. It is important to identify the target correctly.
