A Foundational American Value
What This Value Means
Science is the method of discovering what is true about the natural world through evidence, experimentation, and reason. Innovation is the practical application of that knowledge to improve human life. Together they form a mindset centered on curiosity, problem-solving, and progress. A society committed to science and innovation seeks to understand reality as it is, not as it wishes it to be, and uses that understanding to build tools, systems, and solutions that expand human capability and well being.
Why It Matters
Science and innovation drive advances in health, technology, infrastructure, and quality of life. They help citizens and leaders make informed decisions grounded in evidence instead of superstition or ideology. A democracy depends on a shared respect for facts; without it, policy becomes detached from reality and vulnerable to manipulation. Innovation strengthens national competitiveness, improves economic opportunity, and enables future generations to thrive.
Where This Value Comes From
This value has deep roots in America’s founding era.
- Benjamin Franklin was an internationally recognized scientist whose experiments with electricity, optics, and meteorology shaped Enlightenment thinking.
- Thomas Jefferson studied geology, agriculture, architecture, and paleontology, and founded the University of Virginia as a center for scientific learning.
- James Madison, Hamilton, and others framed the Constitution using Enlightenment reasoning, treating government as something to be examined, tested, and improved through evidence and human experience.
- Early public institutions such as the United States Patent Office (established in 1790), the library system, scientific societies, agricultural improvements, and surveying expeditions all reflected a culture that valued discovery and invention.
- The Declaration and Constitution themselves are grounded in Enlightenment principles: humans can learn, self-govern, and improve their condition through knowledge.
How American History Has Treated This Value
Throughout American history, science and innovation have been central drivers of national development. The Industrial Revolution, public education movements, the space program, medical breakthroughs, and the rise of modern technology all emerged from this foundational commitment. When the nation invested in research and embraced scientific advancement, it flourished. When it rejected evidence for ideology, it stagnated or suffered preventable harm.
Why This Value Is Not Partisan
Science and innovation are not owned by any political party or ideology. They are tools for understanding the world and improving the human condition. The founders embraced them because they saw knowledge as essential for liberty, prosperity, and effective self-government. Rejecting science is not a conservative or liberal act; it is an un-American one.
Closing Principle
Science and innovation are inseparable from the nation’s origins. They shaped our founding documents, guided our early institutions, and remain critical to our future. A country that abandons evidence and discovery abandons the very principles that made it possible.
Americans have always argued about what makes this country what it is, yet even through the noise there are certain principles that seem to form the bedrock of our national character. Science and innovation sit at the center of that foundation. They are not luxuries or cultural preferences or quirks of temperament; they are the lifeblood of the American experiment, the engine that allowed a small, struggling collection of colonies to transform into a modern nation, and the method by which we discover the shape of the world as it truly is. This country became possible through the willingness to test ideas, to question inherited tradition, to measure evidence against belief, and to trust that honest inquiry produces better outcomes than obedience to unquestioned authority.
To understand why science and innovation matter so much to the American story, it helps to see what they actually are. Science is not a collection of facts; it is a method for determining what is most likely true. Innovation is the natural outgrowth of that method, the practical application of curiosity and reason to solve problems, build tools, improve human lives, and expand what we are capable of. The two are inseparable, each one feeding and sharpening the other, and together they form a mindset that is relentlessly oriented toward progress. A country committed to science is a country that accepts reality, even when reality contradicts our assumptions. A country committed to innovation is one that believes improvement is not only possible but necessary. America’s most iconic achievements—from electricity to flight to space exploration to the microchip—arose from that union.
None of this is modern. It is not partisan. It is not some imported ideology smuggled into the culture by academics, technocrats, or coastal elites. It is one of the oldest American values we have, written into our earliest documents and embodied by nearly every major founder in ways that are difficult to overstate. Benjamin Franklin was one of the most distinguished scientists in the world before the Revolution, conducting electrical experiments so groundbreaking that European academies sought his membership. Jefferson approached nearly every problem, from agriculture to architecture to linguistics, with the mindset of a natural philosopher, cataloging fossils, studying meteorology, and designing inventions still admired today. Madison was deeply immersed in Enlightenment reasoning, grounding the Constitution itself in a sober recognition of human behavior rather than superstition or divine right. Washington promoted agricultural innovation at Mount Vernon and believed that progress, in the scientific sense, was essential to a stable republic.
These influences shaped the country in concrete ways. The Constitution is a document crafted by people steeped in Enlightenment thought, people who understood government not as a mystery ordained from above but as a system that could be engineered, evaluated, refined, and constrained using the same empirical habits that guide scientific inquiry. The founders rejected monarchy because it was incompatible with evidence; history showed that unchecked power leads to abuse. They rejected the idea of a state religion because experience demonstrated that mixing church and government corrupted both. They built a nation around the assumption that the world is comprehensible, human beings are fallible, knowledge grows over time, and institutions must adapt as our understanding expands. That is the scientific worldview translated into political architecture.
Early America embraced practical innovation as well. The postal system, public libraries, agricultural societies, fire brigades, surveying expeditions, and the founding of universities like the University of Virginia were all expressions of a culture that believed in knowledge as a public good. The United States Patent Office was created in 1790, almost immediately after the Constitution took effect, because the new nation considered invention and discovery so essential that they needed to be protected and encouraged by law. The Northwest Ordinance emphasized education as a necessary component of republican life. Even early westward expansion was fueled by scientific curiosity; Lewis and Clark’s expedition was, among other things, a massive data-collection project.
This value persisted and grew as the country matured. The transcontinental railroad, the Manhattan Project, the moon landing, the eradication of polio, the rise of Silicon Valley, and the development of the internet all spring from the same fundamental American impulse: look at the world with clear eyes, learn how it works, and build something new. Generation after generation expanded the reach of science and innovation because they understood that progress is not automatic. It requires sustained effort, public investment, education, and a willingness to discard comforting falsehoods when confronted with better evidence. The United States became a global power not because it was destined to, but because it embraced the tools that reveal reality and improve upon it.
That is why it is so alarming that modern politics often treats science as optional or ideological. A society cannot function for long when evidence is accepted only when it is convenient. A democracy cannot make good decisions when large segments of its population view knowledge as a threat and expertise as an enemy. Reality does not bend to opinion; viruses don’t care about slogans, climate systems aren’t influenced by talk radio, and technological progress will not wait for a country that chooses fantasy over fact. The founders understood this instinctively. They lived in an age when superstition still held enormous sway, and they consciously built a nation designed to break free from it.
Science and innovation are American values because they are the only reliable tools for solving the problems of a free society. They protect us from disease, from ignorance, from tyranny, and from stagnation. They give us the means to reduce suffering and expand opportunity. They allow us to understand ourselves more deeply and to shape our future more responsibly. And they remind us that the world is richer, more complex, and more extraordinary than our ancestors could have imagined.
This is not a left-wing idea or a right-wing idea. It is an American one. It is one of the oldest and clearest commitments in our national story, a value without which the United States would not exist. To reject science is to reject the Enlightenment. To reject innovation is to reject progress. And to reject both is to deny the inheritance the founders left us. America survives only when it remains a place where curiosity is not punished, where evidence is not feared, and where we continue the long, unfinished work of trying to understand the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be.
When we defend science and innovation, we are not defending a political position. We are defending the American character itself.