First there is the growing belief in some countries, including Britain, that the purpose of science should be primarily utilitarian. This is a dangerous argument because it is so superficially seductive. Forget all that ivory-tower, blue-sky nonsense: go away to your labs and make us a new iPod or better toaster or more drugs. Poll after poll shows that the public demands that science be more “relevant”. Sadly this attitude of science-must-pay has now permeated the upper echelons of our current administration, and this can be seen in an extraordinary recent snafu that has left Britain’s scientists wild-eyed in disbelief.

The row in question concerned the Gemini Observatory and Britain’s contribution to it. Gemini, as the name suggests, consists of two huge identical telescopes, one in Hawaii and the other in Chile, run by an international consortium. A few months ago it was claimed that Britain was planning to renege on its share of the running costs of the telescopes. British scientists erupted with fury; the Gemini partners reacted with petulance, even unscrewing the Union flag from the facilities, and threw us out of the consortium.

Eventually things were sorted out — sort of. The official line is that it was a “misunderstanding”, that multilingual wires were crossed and that Britain never intended to withdraw from Gemini. Keith ­Mason, the controversial and, in some quarters, unpopular head of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (which allocates money for projects like this), says it was a storm in a teacup and a “non-story”.

Maybe. But the feeling persists that under the current regime “pure” research for research’s sake is going to have to take a back seat to “applied” research — i.e. research that may lead to more iPods, or medicines, or even just highly-trained brains that can be turned into hedge-funders and bank-wreckers. And while Britain may be back in Gemini, there is no doubt that the 25 per cent cuts in physics and astronomy funding that are coming into force right now will hurt hard.

So what is science for? To advance the cause of human knowledge, surely. But people — even scientists — do not always see it like that. Here we come to the second threat: that of overspecialisation and the loss of the polymathic maverick, the thinker outside the box who might often be wrong, or mad, but may occasionally come up with relativity.