Can Science Survive in the Modern Age?
A recent newspaper account of the 1970 annual meeting of the AAAS was headlined, “Science’s Blank Check Bounces.” I am not, however, advocating that giving a “blank check” to science will solve all our problems. The discussion of science policy in the last three decades has too often confused necessary with sufficient conditions. A strong basic science is a necessary condition for a strong economy, a livable environment, and a tolerable society. But it is by no means a sufficient condition. That a vital science is an indispensable tool of human welfare in the present stage of evolution of man on the planet does not mean that it is the only tool or that it cannot also produce the opposite. Indeed, there seems almost to be a complementarity between the power for good and the power for evil inherent in science. Nuclear energy poses the possibility of nuclear holocaust, but is indispensable to a continuing supply of energy after fossil fuels run out. The computer threatens us with “big bro
