Scientists in the Bureaucratic Age
Speyer, 'Edward
A prime factor in the 20th Century Industrial Revolution and the reorganization of society that has accompanied it, science is today itself being reorganized. The rationalists are being...
...Until the last quarter of the 19th century, research was generally conducted on a private basis...
...To a certain extent there is a contradiction in saying, as the AAAS report does for example, that on the one hand science is being impeded by the censorship of work sponsored by government agencies, and on the other hand, that these same agencies are not sponsoring basic research...
...Nevertheless, while this undoubtedly added decisive weight to the revolutionary movement, all accounts show that the initiative came largely from the intellectuals, the "communist" intellectuals, whose discussions, once the heavy lid was off, rapidly became the rallying point of all the latent revolutionary urges...
...With this as a starting point, a few additional remarks may be useful...
...They have trapped themselves...
...d) I understand that if any statement knowingly made by me is found to be incorrect, incomplete, or misleading in any important particular, I may be subject to prosecution and punishment under the appropriate laws of the United States...
...2) Pure research will be slighted and all the emphasis placed on military problems and equipment...
...no remnants of socialist tradition among a working class grown up and shaped under 25 years of the Stalinist machine...
...and when they find in Africa too that their dominance is doomed—that the desire for equality is stronger than the desire for affection —he feels indeed that man in general and the "black" man in particular is ungrateful and hence stupid...
...The Americans with their liberal tradition took it for granted that scientific work in Russia was• on a level with the Soviet conceptions of democracy...
...with the factory manager toward more local responsibility...
...Something more than a recital of the aggressive poten tialities of Russian totalitarianism would seem to be needed to explain how the dedication of science to the welfare of mankind can take the form of perfecting methods to destroy it...
...Scientists are trained to be as keen and insensitive as hunting dogs...
...More subtle is the social pressure exerted by scientists on each other...
...There are those who are interested in the ferry ride, and those whose interest is limited to getting across...
...the white is civilization...
...the Navy, for example, supported a research project on the social organiza...
...But because they are so involved in a nightmare of their own making, a nightmare composed of fears and hates growing out of naivete and pride, they can only froth at the mouth...
...And how very ungrateful the African has been...
...Particularly to be noted is the "flavor," the almost tan gible hostility, the joy which attaches, not to finding a man honorable, but to finding something with which to impugn his honor...
...Joelson think that the refusal of the Kenya government to give a consti tutional role to the African had nothing to do with the rise of Mau Mau...
...The ways in which the urge toward self-realization will express itself will therefore be different, more varied and perhaps more devious...
...3) Military secrecy and security classifications will prevent publication: free interchange of scientific information is essential to the development of science...
...First, the interests of the military are much broader than anticipated...
...Industry was encouraged, by liberal financial inducements, enormously to expand its research facilities and engineering offices...
...The prevailing philosophy that accomplishments in basic research are proportional to the magnitude of well-planned financial investment does not recognize this limit...
...a) I am not now, and I have never been, a member, and I am not now, and I never have been, affiliated or associated with, any of the organizations listed below, as an agent, official or employee...
...No longer considered harmless drudges (as in James Thurber's pre-war cartoon, "Capture of Three Physics Professors") , they have become material to be stockpiled for the defense program...
...Professional ethics have become for individuals what cartels and trusts are for corporations...
...It is the human, social consequences of this marriage, first to the scientists as men, and second to society as a whole, that are dangerous...
...It is through the patronage of the defense program that they have achieved both the prestige and the salary...
...This is a device the Europeans, who build their research projects around star performers, are just beginning to learn...
...Joelson's libelous implication that I advocate rule by Mau Mau...
...Once Khrushchev's speech provided a small opening, there was no stopping this elemental human urge toward self-integrity, and many reports show the tremendous exhilaration of at last being able to search for and tell the truth...
...Meanwhile private industry has been watching its new governmentsubsidized research sections at work and has begun to see commercial possibilities in long term as well as short term research investment...
...This very concrete need of "living with oneself" rather than an abstract love of liberty provided the principal fuel for the upheavals and also explains the ready and overwhelming response in the population, at large...
...The scientists, on their side, have also done well...
...a device to permit the blind to read books set in ordinary type has so far suffered the same fate...
...With the intellectuals, artists and scientists it may go toward more freedom of discussion and expression...
...If he does not, if he cannot see that his responsibility extends beyond his crea tion of dangerous things, then it is the scientist rather than the products of his work who is the greater menace...
...Just as the fruits of science can be used for the benefit of, or injury to, mankind, so the spirit of scientific investigation can include a love for or a distrust of mankind, or neither...
...Medical instrumentation lags because there is not enough money in it...
...Science is sometimes mistaken for a very broad, all-inclusive world viewpoint...
...A generation ago the very few scientifically trained men who hit the big time, like David Sarnoff and Herbert Hoover, ceased to be scientists and became business executives and politicians...
...Dean Harrison writes: "It is 411 the responsibility of every scientist to use his skills to some extent for the benefit of the government that makes possible the continued exist ence of the secluded laboratories in which he likes to work...
...One hears occasionally that so-and-so, unable to get work in a laboratory, has gone in the radio business and is not doing badly (financially, that is) . There are hollow jokes about his making more money now than before, about the FBI really doing him a favor, etc...
...We call it prostitution when a gitted musician or writer turns out high grade trash for motion picture companies, TV soap opera, or the like...
...One could ignore him if he were not so pathetic and so dangerous in his pathos...
...It may or may not be true that the cause of world peace is furthered by intensive research on various kinds of missiles and nuclear weapons...
...Scientists who are working on reagents especially dangerous to man kind have special responsibilities...
...In the 17th and 18th centuries, the scientific spirit grew as part of a new tradition of cultural freedom...
...The majority of scientists feel that J. R. Oppenheimer should have been given clearance by the Atomic Energy Commission...
...When the recipient of affection repudiates the tie then he is to blame...
...At the worst he can make mistakes, and these are easily rectified...
...There has been much flattering publicity and a new respect from important people...
...yet most scientists accept the program as part of the price of having "arrived...
...And then there are the casualties of the security program, the colleagues who suddenly clean out their desks and are seen no more...
...By the time the first World War broke out, important work could no Ionger be looked for from individual scientists functioning on their own...
...Even janitors must fill it out, since they have access to classified information, viz, the waste-baskets...
...A radical and rapid change can be expected in agriculture: here the return to private landholding and/or cultivation, combined with some form of cooperative marketing, is very likely, even in Russia...
...In both contemporary America and Russia, groups which are considered important are placed under surveillance...
...Examples are partcularly easy to find in cybernetics and in operations research...
...The latter is hitting the big time on its own...
...The mode of thinking—or, rather of reacting--of the Colonial Colonel Blimp is sufficiently revealed in this extract from Mr...
...The pure researcher is affectionately labeled a "genius" by his colleagues, but authority, real prestige, and the general feeling that they deserve the highest salaries belong to the Chief Engineer, Director of Research, and Project Leader...
...For the settlers are pathetic...
...An enduring prosperity, engineered by a capitalism that has learned to manipulate the economy, has emptied socialist sails and dulled political thinking in general...
...An their conventions and conferences, in their publications, from the governing boards of their organizations, one sees and hears almost nothing of dissent...
...Hence while in the 30s and 40s, spurred on by the experience of Fascism and Stalinism, western socialist and social thought produced some valuable new insights and even institutions, the trend may well go the other way, and in the next decade fruitful new developments may come from a no longer stagnant East...
...Lord Rayleigh's work and Einstein's three great papers of 1905 represent almost the last major scientific achievements unsubsidized by university, industry, or government agency...
...It is customary for scientists to poke fun at the stupidities and injustices of the security program, to point out that it does not make sense as a program to prevent espionage and sabotage, but only as a program to control and intimidate people...
...How nice for the African...
...Both partners have gotten essentially what they bargained for, and both are satisfied...
...he is instead a large landowner, one of the wealthiest men in Kenya, and an oldtime leader of the reactionary forces in Kenya...
...The government greatly enlarged its own research facilities, but a major portion of government sponsored research is done by private corporations...
...Today, scientists like Vannevar Bush can reach official positions of influence as scientists...
...Not both...
...This custom was formerly unusual in the physical sciences, and generally secret, but many of today's men of sci ence, with their businesslike attitude, see nothing shameful in such practice, nor in the companion practice of publishing the same results in several different places...
...Scientists, exponents par excellence of the reasonable and factual approach to problems, whether in engineering or in politics, have been promoted to influential status, but the competence of the leadership of our society has not improved...
...I believe we can get the entire string of events in the right perspective if we view them as manifestations of a deep urge toward a more just social setup which seeks its course among and over any obstacles that are being raised in its path...
...As for research itself, the plain fact is that more of it is being done on basic problems and general theory than ever before...
...perhaps also a less acute memory of better times...
...with this affection it must be beneficent...
...In patrolled and guarded Fort Monmouth, long before McCarthy showed up, security officials had the habit of going through desks at night to see if classified documents had been left "unsecured," outside the special vaults or padlocked files...
...These three fears have not proved of major significance, although the general opinion held among liberals and radicals is otherwise...
...To check this statement one must look, not at what liberal scientists claim in their public statements, but at the articles published each month in the lead ing scientific journals and at programs of the annual society meetings...
...Geneva conference on atomic energy...
...The scientists speak of Human Betterment, Labor-Saving Devices, abolition of malnutrition and disease, Leisure and Culture for All, One World, etc., yet are will ing to devote their best efforts to perfecting ways to destroy populations...
...The following is quoted from clearance form DD 48-1 issued by the Department of Defense to be filled out by civilians working for companies which have been awarded classified contracts...
...The scientists' ingestion of a factory-like concept of scientific work lies behind the accepted differentiation between pure and applied science...
...The Amazing Marriage confronts the scientific community with a political problem: Do scientists approve of the use to which their efforts are being put...
...Between the few pioneering scientists and Hiroshima lay many more scientists, many millions of dollars, and a number of top-level political and military decisions...
...As science has become more important to industry and government, changes have been taking place in the spirit of science and of scientists...
...Thus the claim to like the African immediately and completely repudiates any argument against white rule...
...They even have a case...
...The scientific spirit of inquiry...
...The asocial attitudes of scientists have had little effect on the quality of science itself because the cultural prerequisites for science no longer include democracy...
...Like all experts in our compartmentalized culture, the scientist sees his first loyalty to his colleagues rather than to his fellow humans...
...The rationalists are being rationalized...
...Here, in their acceptance of a factory-like conception of scientific work, lies the secret of the felicity of the Amazing Marriage: the scientists have been led, not bludgeoned, into new ways...
...The Radiation Laboratories at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where was developed under military sponsorship much of the electronics theory, especially radar, embodied in World War II equipment, published after the war 27 volumes summarizing its work...
...Much valuable work is kept unpublished, and there is duplication that could be avoided, but in spite of this, more than half the papers published in the ever thicker and more numerous periodicals are the result of work paid for, directly or indirectly, by a military or other government agency...
...And if the reports on the unrest and malaise among the young Russian elite, on the questions raised openly about the Polish and Hungarian events in factory and student meetings—if these and similar reports are a true indication of the state of the Russian mind, or at least of an important sector, then indeed the process of fermentation has gone much further than we dare hope...
...The most urgent problems of our time have turned out to be political...
...they understand that scientific concepts are dangerous in a quite different way from democratic concepts...
...Finally, one must give Mr...
...e) I understand the meaning of the statements contained in this certification, and that misrepresentation (by omission or concealment, or by mis• leading, false or partial answers) of the certificate may constitute grounds for removal or other appropriate action...
...Pure scientists are, or used to be, philosophers in disguise...
...Many scientists, however, have gone along with the prevailing philosophy...
...The scientists' traditional interests and predilections were not only non-military, but often anti-military...
...Research has been transformed from an individual effort to what the economist Sumner Slichter aptly calls an "industry of discovery...
...The fact that the Nazis were short-sighted enough to drive many of the finest scientists out of Germany does not prove that science cannot exist and advance under a totalitarian regime any more than the Amazing Marriage proves that scientists accept a military way of thinking...
...Paradoxically, the scientists can win the respect to which their talents entitle them only by sacrificing their present respectability...
...This is not a matter of a citizen claiming the right to work for the government or on classified projects...
...The terms seemed even contradictory...
...I see no evidence in my article that I think the Mau Mau is a tribe...
...Of course, the situation in Russia differs in some essential points from that in the satellite countries: no national solidarity to fuse and focus the disparate tendencies of revolt...
...there has been a rude awakening in the last few years, perhaps the biggest eye-opener being the Russian reports to the...
...issued statements opposing, or asking further study of, any new H-bomb tests...
...The first of these fears—the military mind in the laboratory— has not materialized because, instead of trying to introduce military discipline or military-like organization in the laboratories, the military has applied modern production methods...
...Farther down, is the Attorney General's list of more than 250 organizations, some of them long extinct, considered "as having interests in conflict with those of the United States...
...but the pure scientist loves to discern unity in di versity, to see the different problems as special cases subsumed under a more general theory...
...One key to his mode of reacting is found in Mr...
...Almost every paragraph of a technical article shows whether the author wants to get to the bottom of a difficulty instead of merely around it, whether he loves neatness in his theoretical housekeeping, whether he seeks the most general formulation, whether he is interested in how far a new idea can be applied before it loses its validity...
...He does not even care if the white man's claim is valid—that white rule is beneficent...
...Science, which has contributed mightily to the cult of the expert, finds its disciples pressured into becoming experts who are motivated not by deep curiosity but by the desire to be technically competent...
...Scientists are today enjoying a new prestige and a new salary bracket...
...IRVING HOWE has rightly emphasized the fact that a working class with considerable socialist traditions still existed in Budapest and Warsaw...
...From time to time they propose that the government study its own security regulations and reform them, but that is about as ferocious as the battle-cry ever becomes...
...a million tons of wheat to provide a lever to control grain prices during the period of decollectivization which could then take place next year...
...The material published per month in technical journals has at least doubled since 1938...
...Back when I was a student," writes the eldery physicist Leon Brillouin, "there was little question of organized research...
...there are really intelligent people who feel that Fermi and his colleagues would have done well, when they first uncovered the "terrible" truths of nuclear energy, to have quickly averted their gaze, thrown a blanket over their apparatus, and quietly sunk the discovery under the waters of Lake Michigan It is, of course, difficult...
...thus, if a chemist produces a dan gerous reagent in the laboratory, he is not expected to destroy it, but he can justly be expected to insist on special precautions...
...But scientists do not seem able to rise above the vulgar materialism of our times...
...The irony of the word "secluded" is probably unconscious, as is the appropriate ness of the same remark from the mouth of a Soviet leader...
...The public thought of scientists as dedicated men, like poets...
...In the process, the very pressures exerted by political, geographic and economic factors will force intellectuals and political thinkers of these countries to develop some new political ideas and perhaps new forms of social organization...
...Dean Harrison implies that the atomic bomb was the immediate product of the work of Fermi and his colleagues atChicago...
...Another consequence is that research has become increasingly confounded with "politics," i.e., corridor intrigue, with greater emphasis on reports, memos, conferences (administrators tend to believe that thinking is a social process) , "personality," and the art of promotion ("empirebuilding") . A third consequence has been an increased awareness of advertising possibilities...
...Initially, it might be posed as a research problem...
...This is by no means premature speculation: Gosnulka is said to have requested from the U.S...
...Most spokesmen for the scientific community, however, being "responsible leaders," seek to dull such awareness...
...How would it look, and who would hire you, if you refused to fill out clearance forms...
...In short a Colonial Colonel Blimp...
...When he establishes a "qualitative" franchise—what a phrase!—he tries to span the gulf between black and white by saying that a black man who attains a certain standard of civilization can vote...
...This, and the occasional individual protests against the Amazing Marriage, are not, however, sufficient to start or sustain the needed chain reaction within the scientific community...
...Really fundamental advances cannot be planned or scheduled...
...What shall we say of the gifted scientist who seeks more efficient ways of distributing trash, or who turns out, not trash but deadly poison, for uses in which he does not believe...
...The history of our times gives the lie to that legend...
...Science is in a golden age...
...and if science is being mis led, it is seduction, not rape...
...The man who pays the piper has been big-hearted about calling the tune, especially since so many tunes develop into hit songs...
...Only through the courtesy of the white man...
...Whether and how these trends will coalesce, how long the Khrushchevs will be able to stem or divert the tide, is hard to tell...
...the Armed Services Technical Information Agency (ASTIA) maintains a large-scale photostating service in Dayton, Ohio, which sends photostats of requested reports to other laboratories doing work for the government...
...the scientists cheered when Edward Condon was introduced to a large convention of physicists as "the 'weakest link in our security system' who turned out to be a very strong link indeed...
...And where such a subject-object relationship exists within a framework of legal and cultural inequality, is derision far behind...
...today, its original proposals having unhappily become obsolete, its policies on the issues with which it concerns itself are so moderate, even conservative, that it refutes its own purpose, i.e., one can see that if the Federation of American Scientists (which publishes the Bulletin) were given a decisive voice, little would change in American policy...
...Third, the scientists themselves have aided and abetted the new emphases...
...actually it is a narrow and often restricting way of looking at the world...
...Supposing a liberal mind—a mind which is willing to give up its own particular privileges and even make a place for the "black"—what can he do...
...Actually, it was several years and gigantic research establishments later, and after the President had over-ruled objections, that atomic bombs were detonated upon Japanese civilians...
...The Army, Navy, and Air Force each have their well-financed operations research establish ments...
...The theoretical men are meanwhile assigned other work, often the investigation of possibilities turned up by their earlier work...
...There has, however, been considerable complaint against the suppression of scientific information...
...they know it subconsciously and they know what the trap means...
...To take the best publicized example: electric power generated by nuclear reactors would be as far in the future as inter-planetary commuting if the utility companies did not have the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy Commission laying the scientific groundwork, footing the bill, and pushing the construction...
...This is no accident...
...The scientists cannot do this without placing their salaries, their prestige, and their Amazing Marriage in jeopardy...
...THERE IS ANOTHER bedrock assumption to the reaction of the British settler...
...Though scientific investigations are not aimless, scientists are, in effect, advised by Dean Harrison to leave long range aiming to their sponsors...
...Putting the shoe on the other foot, it should be recognized that the absence of any desire to produce something useful in "the outside world" is far from a guar antee that an investigation is pure, fundamental, or worth-while...
...What has the ability of the African to understand my phrases to do with the prob lems of Africa...
...the European settler does in fact have a real affection for the African —in his proper place as an unspoiled "boy," and primitive...
...science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition...
...One or the other...
...They seem to cherish this civilization as some vestal maiden which once removed from their hands will not only lose its virtue but its very life...
...The military gets the weapons and counterweapons it wants, and some of the intellectual respectability of the scientists rubs off onto military uniforms...
...But this much, should be said: it does not matter today whether the British settler likes the African or not...
...It can and will be eliminated from science if leading scientists lack an ethical and political attachment to it...
...After all, the existence of an immediate or useful goal does not, in and of itself, impair the fundamental character of an investigation...
...Much of it may eventually turn out to be ephemeral sophistication and improvization in answer to temporary situations (the Gomulka-Wyszinski pact is a case in point), but some of it is likely to enrich permanently socialist thought and practice...
...The economic pressure on scientists to become experts is clear from a comparison of salaries within and without the academic world...
...One sometimes wonders what all the fuss is about...
...The tie is absolute...
...The economic failure of collectivization from any viewpoint except that of a war economy is too evident, the memory of individual agrarian production too fresh...
...The Russians have always kept up on the technical literature of America and western Europe...
...Most scientists have been surprised at the harmony with which scientists have been working, directly and indirectly, for and under the military...
...Scientists once had the reputation of being fascinated with truth and beauty rather than careers...
...A technical problem is broken down and parceled out...
...The dangerous potentialities of science are recognized in a general way by everyone, but American scientists do not often show awareness of particular dangers...
...But what may not be so obvious to those of the settler's milieu is that affection is a means of capturing the other, making him obligated to the giver of affection and thus tying him to a slave-relationship more complete than any legal one could ever be...
...one hopes so...
...IT Is WORTH noting that all these developments, in and out of Russia, can be expected to leave the socialization of industry largely intact, while bringing more democratization and decentralization to the economy, and gradually enlarging the free market sector in the field of distribution, as more consumer goods become available...
...The pressure of such a state of things weighs most heavily on the intellectuals and artists who by their very function must be articulate where others can be silent and thereby dull their inner conflicts...
...They have been much impressed with the fact that the theory of relativity provided a theoretical basis for the atomic bomb...
...the High Brass are fond of implementing their feuds and bud get proposals with reports larded with mathematics and technical terms...
...It is not practicality that pure science needs to be kept pure from...
...Contrary to most expectations, fundamental research has not been harmed by the "marriage" of government and scientists—the military have had enough sense and money to let scientists work pretty much on their own...
...That tradition, for reasons which cannot be dealt with here, has largely been exhausted, with the consequence that th'e flourishing of science and the extension of democracy are today almost completely independent processes...
...Joelson a point...
...Attendance or participation in any organizational, social, or other activities of said organizations or of any projects sponsored by them...
...The volume of current research and the rate at which progress is being made on hundreds of scientific problems would have been unthinkable if scientists had remained on the typical pre-war university research budget...
...with the peasants toward an enlargement of the "private" market sector...
...The role of science in Russia looks ominously like the future toward which American science may be heading...
...surely Mr...
...The essential difference between pure research and the other kind lies in the values and attitudes of the researcher...
...Still another consequence is the significant increase in respected phoniness within scientific organizations and publications...
...An exception was the situation which developed during Iast fall's presidential election campaign when many scientists and groups of scientists (73 at Argonne, 62 at Brookhaven, 11 at Columbia, etc...
...b) I do not, and have not engaged in any of the following activities of the organizations listed below...
...in the larger sense, everyone has the same obligation to examine his own feelings and beliefs and to accept responsibility for the likely consequences of his work...
...How can a master who has affection not be beneficent...
...Denial of clearance results in the person being black-listed...
...Research is concerned with ideas, and with measurements designed to support or disprove ideas...
...research jobs used to be scarce and pay poorly...
...It is also interesting to observe how much more deeply western European intellectuals seem to have been stirred by these new developments than their American counterparts...
...the giver of affection is blameless...
...One of the standard clauses in government research contracts is that complete technical reports must be submitted...
...They are as unaware of the over-riding importance of the qual ity of television programs and commercials, compared to the quality of reception, as they are to their own role in making the problems more acute...
...This holds for the salesman and the Marine as much as for the scientist...
...The real damage of the security system lies not so much in censorship of findings as in what it is doing to the relationship between the scientists and their fellow citizens...
...Scientists have become important...
...Many of the British settlers have gone to Africa to find again the position of social dominance and prestige which they were losing at home...
...it is likely to be the result of extra-scientific interests of leading scientists...
...At the end of his sober appraisal of the new developments in Eastern Europe (Spring 1957, DISSENT) Irving Howe welcomes the possibility "that the need for reworking the ideas of democratic socialism is felt not only among socialists in the West but also among new friends in the East...
...Joelson is quite right...
...they need not include morals or tolerance or other necessities of social betterment...
...If the settler was not fundamentally derisive concerning his dearly beloved African he would take him seriously—give him rights...
...As for (a) , the already well-known truths about radioactive fall-out, radii of total destruction, and possible long-term genetic effects, are quite sufficient...
...Even professional humor has become ominous: calling a military missile "The Peacemaker" or the hydrogen bomb "The Super-Duper" is cute in a horrible way, like boys playing cowboys-and-Indians with loaded fire-arms...
...fully fearful mother must be essentially political, rather than in fields of the scientists' special competence...
...They are more likely to have a student past which now leads to security clearance problems, while engineering students formed a politically conservative group even during the Thirties...
...The tradition of cultural freedom is generally brought into science from outside...
...Publication is often the chief purpose of a project, as of a journey by a Richard Halliburton or John Gunther...
...The most ominous portent for science today does not come from government control through subsidization and security regulations, but from the limited horizons of scientists themselves...
...It is simply a fact that nearly all research or development opportunities, especially in physics and electrical engineering, require clearance whether the work is on classified projects or not...
...Important work in sociology, psychology, and biology is probably being held up...
...they are angered by the State Department's visa policies which keep foreign scientists from visiting the United States...
...To ac cept the major line of official American defense policy uncritically is hardly scientific...
...The real danger is to the purity of the scientists...
...For over a century our society has nurtured itself on the legend that the better world of the future was first and foremost a problem in engineering...
...If society is to use its scientists more wisely than it does today, at least some of the leadership in the necessary political struggles must be forthcoming from the scientists themselves...
...or civilization is civilization and the black can participate on the basis of equality...
...This badly distorted figure is obtained by classifying research as applied whenever the end in view is practical...
...Such is the settler—with his stock of late-Victorian ideas...
...Joelson knows the difference between authentic and justified...
...The search for the nature of nature goes on, but is it quite as before...
...The social problems involved in automation, as well as those involved in nuclear and bacteriological weapons, are considered "outside our field...
...Scientific work is not of much help in developing a sense of humor or a sense of beauty unless a man is inclined to develop them anyway...
...For those who cannot answer affirmatively, there is a second problem: Can a man wash his hands of responsibility ("It is society, not the scientists, who misuse the new discoveries") for the probable consequences of his work...
...Joelson's allegations one by one...
...Joelson's journal to make it worthy of a few comments...
...Business executives, too, have begun to find such "scientizing" a useful means for accumulating prestige...
...Technical advisory boards are everywhere in government today...
...I HAVE NOT ATTEMPTED to refute Mr...
...The African does not ask to be liked...
...Three fears had been expressed with particular frequency: (1) Supervision of research by military men will interfere with intelligent prosecution of the work...
...and to "list the individuals and the organizations...
...One can only guess what tremendous effects such a change would work in the social and political fabric of countries where a majority of the population still is employed in agriculture...
...Before the research is even begun, plans are completed for the publication of re suits...
...Poorly equipped laboratories were once as standard as poor art studios...
...Joelson...
...it thus appeals to people who like to use their imaginations...
...Not every line of scientific investigation appears equally likely to be fruitful, and not every fruitful line equally likely to be beneficial...
...The West, and notably the U.S., is rather far removed from this stimulating experience...
...It is largely because of technology and science that the military leaders have come to exercise greater influence in American government and industry than ever before in peace time...
...Today Brillouin is fearful that scientific curiosity will dissapear and scientists will all become experts and bureaucrats...
...but it is impossible to insulate the Russian people from the virus at work in the satellite nations, and this virus will find an increasingly favorable "culture" in Russia...
...then, if theoretical results and/or an experimental model look promising, the problem is turned over to an engineering group for redesign into a pre-production model...
...Perhaps there would be a closer correspondence between the moral and logical orientations of science if human beings were as consistent as Sidney Hook implies when he holds that Communists cannot think independently...
...I am not a propagandist, like Mr...
...The idea that goals can be set and reached by research teams has replaced the old concept of research "as a kind of exotic garden to be cultivated in the hope of producing an occasional rare fruit...
...the sale, gift, or distribution of any written, printed, or other matter, prepared, reproduced, or published by them or any of their agents or instrumentality...
...In medical science, to take another example, basic research requires talent of the highest sort, but the typical income of the research physicians is far below that of most practicing physicians...
...And being absolute it lands the settler in a terrible dilemma...
...Today's popular prejudice against scientists, even though the reasons given are often illfounded, arises from true insight...
...It is true that military and industrial preferences have affected the directions in which research is oriented...
...The fallacy is too apparent to need explaining...
...That is the claim to represent white civilization repeated over and over again in speeches of white Rhodesians and Kenyans...
...Some of the "luxury" investigations carried out under government contracts produced information that was useful in the manufacture of civilian commodities...
...But sooner or Iater the settler will have to face the problem and decide...
...instead of pointing out overrationalizations of research, as in certain "crash programs," for example, they have adopted the same accountant type of reasoning...
...The trouble with applied science is not that it is applied, i.e., that there is an application waiting for the result, but that too often it is not science at all but only a shrewd compromise between imitation, trial and error, and "brute force" engineering...
...here, rather than in the proportions of budget allotments, is the threat to pure science...
...Second, military men have often been willing to take the scientists' word for it that basic research provides the foundation on which later practical developments will be based, even when one cannot predict which foundations will be useful for which practical developments...
...politicians conceal their typical American prejudices against Ph.D.'s...
...However, there is a limit to the kind of scientific work which can be rationalized...
...The Atomic Energy Commission is still issuing volumes of an even larger series describing the chemistry, physics, and instrumentation developed under its auspices...
...The beneficence of British rule in Africa has escaped many persons including both Britishers and Africans...
...Without this affection the rule of Britain could not be beneficent...
...Scientists cannot reverse the popular judgment by explaining their present activities, but only by changing them...
...But for the record: where have the British not resisted African aspirations...
...to explain to a mother who feels that her entire family is likely to be wiped out by an atomic bomb, and would not be if the bomb had not been invented, that man must for the sake of his own spirit seek to uncover whatever truth he can .. . Although government agencies, and especially the military, are able to pick and choose among truths, i.e., to decide in advance what research they will support and what they do not wish to encourage, the scientists themselves are here denied the right or possibility of being able to pick and choose...
...And since there is no foreign oppressor to turn against, it is most likely that as the fermentation progresses, it will show itself in more frequent and sharper conflicts at the top...
...If this is true, then it must equally apply to Russia proper...
...Joelson's claim that the majority of Europeans have a "real affection for the African...
...And who has worked in an office or laboratory in which nothing is ever mislaid...
...He still wants power...
...The explanation which Dean Harrison urges be given to the right...
...Modesty, it is true, seems less esteemed among scientists than formerly...
...It is only the bad master—the one without affection—who is brutal...
...Does Mr...
...f) I understand that failure to execute all, or portions, of this certificate may serve as a basis for denial of clearance for access to classified Department of Defense information...
...Complaints are justified, but the significance of the censorship is exaggerated...
...Undoubtedly, an enlightened Western policy could, by judicious economic aid and cultural exchanges, gradually widen the area of maneuver for hardpressed satellite countries...
...c) I am not now knowingly associating with, nor have I knowingly associated with any individuals, including relatives, who are or have been members of the organizations listed in paragraphs I and II below...
...The security program has helped to set scientists apart from the humanity which they are pledged to serve...
...tion of insects...
...it is too easy and too tiresome...
...Civilization is white...
...But the military approached the matter in a businesslike way: it accelerated specialization...
...He wants not affection but power...
...Their claim not to be "bad" is a just one...
...they usually involve a challenge, or overthrow, of accepted theories...
...And courtesy no more than affection is a sound basis for policy in Africa today...
...Is democracy going to win everywhere...
...There is no way out but rule by the white man...
...And instead of higher standards of morality being brought to their sponsors by the promoted scientists, it is the moral standards of the scientific commmnity which have changed...
...The "marriage" of the military machine with the research scientists has, despite initial trepidation on both sides, been unexpectedly happy...
...What is one of the functions of Kipande if not to control labor...
...I resent Mr...
...He has tied civilization to a race and he has to pay the price...
...The modern laboratory is not run by Army officers, nor by businessmen, but by the practitioners of a booming new profession, one might almost say a new science: research administration...
...Joelson seems to have finally realized, but what he does not realize is that the power is seen as an end in itself...
...Partly through the fault of a timid Western policy, the iron curtain is still a fairly effective barrier...
...Joelson had better argue with the UN about the problems of compulsory labor in Kenya...
...In this way, more people can be used on a project at the same time, and each person is kept at the kind of work for which he is particularly qualified...
...Quite the contrary, he has done more to harm it than he will ever know...
...Every time a classified drawing or memo is mislaid, a cold hand touches the hearts of those who might be held accountable...
...One consequence of the increased division of labor has been the discovery that much, though not all, first grade work can be done with second grade talent...
...with the student youth toward depolitization and less puritanism...
...Such people felt that the military might carry its distrust of unconfined imagination into the laboratory...
...not only physics and electronics, which are of greatest interest to the military, but chemistry and biology also are advancing so fast and on so many fronts that the scientists themselves have trouble keeping abreast of developments related to their work...
...The universities were persuaded, by somewhat less liberal use of the same kind of inducement, to sign research contracts or to set up research institutes...
...The Army can be expected to reflect some of these tendencies and to respond to them...
...with the workers toward direct economic action bypassing the statified unions...
...Independent thinking and interchange of information are essential to scientists, but neither the thinking nor the information need rise above the technical level...
...Between 1930 and 1953, according to estimates by the National Science Foundation and others, there has been a fifteen-fold real increase in expenditures for research and development, and in the same period, about a five-fold increase in the number of employed scientists...
...they are concerned, in a general way, with the misuse to which scientific discovery is being put...
...Colonel Grogan is not in fact a Colonial official...
...including dates, places," etc...
...But how can a black man attain this standard if civilization is white by definition...
...The most important changes are not, however, those which the liberalradical tradition predicted on the basis of its belief that science, as a search for truth, is essentially incompatible with investigations designed to solve immediate practical problems (weapons or marketable products) and that its publications must be uncensored...
...However, the scientist's respon sibilities are special only in the sense that they are peculiar to his func tion...
...the danger is more generic...
...or on the unsubsidized payrolls of private industry, that is, dependent on the consumer market...
...A particularly clear example appeared in Physics Today in an article entitled "The Responsibilities of Physicists for the Future," by Professor George R. Harrison, Dean of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: The layman needs to know that one cannot pick and choose among the truths uncovered by science, but must take them as they come and use them as one can...
...A Hippocratic Oath for all scientists, a declaration that scientists will act according to their own views instead of taking their morals from those whose liquor they drink—these become meaningful only if scientists organize and intervene on the political scene in their true role of intellectual pioneers, which is to say, with deeper political insight than our political leaders reveal today...
...The real settler—the man in his land—is so few...
...He contributes nothing, economically or any other way, to the white civilization he so deeply cherishes...
...But they are quiet and leaderless...
...And this reflection is what hurts the Colonial Colonel Blimp so deeply...
...The most encouraging fact about American science today is that the majority of the most competent scientists remain in the universities despite the lower salaries...
...When the workers of East Berlin went on strike in June 1953, a direct echo was heard a few months later when the inmates of the Arctic labor camps followed their example...
...Civilization is either white and the black cannot participate...
...Kilson's article which describes this particular rebellion and its forms as justified...
...Under military patronage, science is flourishing as never before...
...Below, the signer is instructed to give "a full detailed statement...
...The recent report of the American Association for the Advance ment of Science (AAAS) on social aspects of science (New York Times, December 31, 1956) states that about ninety per cent of the funds al lotted for research by Federal agencies is for "applied research and development rather than basic science...
...Besides, he so obviously resents the fact that Americans know enough to criticize his empire that no rebuttal will have any effect on his opinions...
...they enjoy songs like Tom Lehrer's, and "Take Away Your Million Dollars...
...One of the essential features of totalitarianism is the continuous split between myth and reality by which it forces its subjects to live...
...There has been a rush to set up translating services—Russian to English—so that Russian contributions would be available to American scientists...
...almost as soon as the universities established their own laboratories, however, the bulk of important research became associated with them...
...This trend, however, is a subtle one for three reasons...
...World War II required an enormous expansion of research and development which has since hardly abated...
...If the scientists continue to think of themselves as scientists first and citizens afterward, they cannot resist the present trends, but are fated to become an important source of strength for reactionary groups who can afford to subsidize them...
...One can be sure that in such cases there will be plenty of im portant-sounding "results...
...A great many of these reports are unclassified and can be obtained by almost anyone...
...It is correct to say that a state conquers its in dependence (the Sudan) even if it does not bash in the heads of the British...
...A prime factor in the 20th Century Industrial Revolution and the reorganization of society that has accompanied it, science is today itself being reorganized...
...But Mr...
...There are Afri cans looking for power as Mr...
...Unfortunately the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is not an exception, although it is a magazine written by scientists crusading for (a) the right of the public to know the truth about atomic weapons, and (b) the need for scientists to influence national military policy...
...There is no necessary reason why such scientists must always be a minority...
...Historically, the scientific spirit rose above the Church and above politics, neither of which were of its own making...
...The integration of scientific research into the basic framework of our economic structure has had an effect on the scientists' own view of science, not because they recognize the integration but becausethey do not recognize it...
...isolated intellectually from both parts of Europe is by no means unreal...
...The possibility of a self-satisfied U.S...
...The liberal tradition still holds to the belief that science and freedom must stand or fall together, and this may be true in the long run, while the facts of life show that competent men of science can be totalitarians, bigots, and scoundrels...
...Perhaps a compromise which ignores the dilemma can be patched up...
...What a pleasant surprise...
...To the engineer it matters little if different types of problems are solved with completely different tech niques and concepts...
...Sooner or later, it would seem, all the fundamental advances do find their way into literature...
...As for (b) , when the Bulletin first appeared 11 years ago it campaigned for a liberal policy on atomic weapon control...
...It is important to recognize that this claim of affection is the basis of the power and position of the British settler...
...There is nothing in Mr...
...Taken as a whole, the adaptation of the scientific community to the new ways has been remarkably painless, and the scientists surprisingly docile...
...These leaders will remain in a powerful position so long as the accelerated rate of scientific advance (which today does not necessarily imply Historical Progress) renders military strategy and equipment obsolete even before it is finally agreed upon...
...Einstein wrote, "Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power...
Vol. 4 • September 1957 • No. 4
