Many particle physicists seem to believe that all science flows from physics, and all physics from particle physics, hence they are the high priests of science. And as the high priests of science, if you want progress in science you need to fund multi-million (these days multi-billion) dollar experiments so that they can hit the next threshold and write papers only they can read, and get tenure.

This view of life is very clean, pure, austere, and convenient if you are a particle physicist.

My view is rather difference. Science is a human endeavour founded in basic curiousity and analysis of, "How does that work?" There is more science in someone wondering at the way a plate of food wobbles around on the ground than in yet another piece of mental masturbation on superstring theory.

I am dead serious on that rather unfair example. There is simply no comparison. Lest people miss the reference, what got Feynman out of period where he wasn't doing any physics was exactly the plate problem, after seeing an accident in a cafeteria. The answers he got to that problem later on applied to the piece of research that earned him a Nobel. Staring at a wobbling plate lead to a Nobel in physics. When was the last superstring paper that did likewise?

In my view any subject matter that has gotten away from the fundamental elements of intellectual play, observing the world, and that fundamental sense of, "Wow! Things really work that way! Neato!" has lost contact with the center of science. The deepness or importance of the problems matter squat. It is the characteristics of the pursuit that mark a science.

Particle physics hit that wall long ago. It now costs billions of dollars even to ask the next question, let alone to test the stuff the theoreticians like to pontificate on. The money is justified on the basis of the fact that they are deep, important problems. We are discussing the Nature Of The Universe. We are discussing things which literally have Cosmic Import since we are learning about the Big Bang.

Other areas of science don't have that trouble. They have not pushed their fields so far. There are much more approachable problems. Experiments cost less, a lot less. They can actually answer interesting questions, and the answers lead to other answerable questions. Some of the answers turn out to be useful (ie make money). Which ones? Hard to predict. Useful stuff comes from all over.

But governments historically have listened to particle physicists. After all they built the bomb. What will their next miracle be? In the meantime solid state physics has a claim to the bomb which pretty good. They also have claims to transistors, atomic clocks, lasers...

Now they are challenging the particle physicists claim to be discussing the deepest and most significant problems in the universe. Well good. It would be nice to see particle physicists knocked off of their pedestal.

But my view is that there are a lot of different kinds of science out there. Lots of them are pretty fun to learn about. And IMHO particle physics happens to be near the bottom of the list of ones I care about seeing supported...

Cheers,
Ben