Sir

Yes, as you say in your leading article, science and engineering are centred on core disciplines ( Nature 390, 101; 1997), each giving a form of identity to the members of their communities and making distinctive contributions to the advance of knowledge and its applications — but now in ways more multidisciplinary than ever before.

To take your example of molecular biology, the headlines it captures rest essentially on continuing advances in knowledge and technical developments in other areas of research such as physics, chemistry and engineering, and will continue to do so.

Each discipline should ensure that its role in contemporary science is understood and properly valued, but it must not lose sight of the essential unity of ‘science’. That unity must be promoted in coherent cross-disciplinary advocacy. If we, in the ‘broad church of science’, forget that, how can we expect the Treasury accountants to understand? Divided, we fall.

The Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Colleges of Medicine have the authority and the responsibility to speak for ‘science’, in the broad sense (it is a pity they are three, not one). Save British Science (SBS) also tries. A very coherent message was recently given to John Battle, the minister for science, by a group of 20 senior academics mustered by SBS; it included a chemical engineer, an astrophysicist and a clinician.

Unfortunately your article's emphasis on discipline-based advocacy can too easily turn into a narrow, negatively competitive struggle for a share of inadequate resources. Speaking for science as a whole may be less easy, but it is essential if the long-term health of science is to be preserved — and truer to the spirit of Nature .