EOTE RE THIS TRANSCRIPT: --

with the exception of an occasional doubtful spelling of
a medical and/or technical term or a proper name, this is

a verbatim transcript of Dr. Lederberg's extremely inter-
esting and thought-provoking address.

THE TRAXSCRIBER


INTERVENTION:  THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOOD

Lecture by DR. JOSHUA LEDERBERG

Monday, May 8 at 8:30 P.M.
  Caspary Auditorium
The Rockefeller University
66th Street and York Avenue

! q-l2

       ?*
     pi
  $p                    Professor
q: 2."        MAN (ALEC) t  B Lederberg,  ladies and gentlemen:

    Throughout human history,  the need to interlace medicine with

the economic and social framework of the day has been a pos-
tulate more implicitly assumed than explicitly stated.  Yet,

despite the inwardly directed,  somewhat harassing day-to-day
activities of a busy department of medicine, in which the in-

         of
gredients m research, health care and education are juggled
uneasily in an atmosphere of fiscal impedance, the need to

spend some time explicitly considering the interrelations

between biomedical sciences and the public weal has never

been more pressing.

The influence of society on our medical and scientific

research needs to be evaluated just as rigorously as the more

conventional reverse considerations of the effects of science

                                      has
on society.  For more than five years, it m been my hope,

and the hope of others in the department, to inaugurate a

series of lectures in which these themes could be explored

by one whose concerns extended beyong the narrow profession-
alism of the biomedical sciences to embrace the larger picture.


We are gathered he-e this c7:ening because khis 'loge

has, after five years,  been realized by the generosity of
        q ha, <*; . . ..cLL..
one who, as PresAent of the Columbia Broadcasting System,

understands as few others do the science and art of effec-

tive communication.  Mr. William S. Paley, whose warm friend-

ship with Doctor Jeremiah Bar$ndess(?) has furthered his in-

terests in the goals of our department, and whose generous

support has enabled a series of lectures to come into being,

had hoped to be here this evening, Unfortunately, he is not

able to be with us.

We're exceptionally privileged to have as our first

William S. Paley lecturer one whose scientific contributions

are massive,  and whose knowledge and interests range far and

run deep.  Doctor Joshua Lederberg is Professor of Genetics

and Biology g: the Stanford University School of Medicine.  His

research on genetic recombination and the organization of

genetic material in bacteria was recognized in 1958 by the

Nobel Award for medicine and physiology, in which he shared
                                         ~&LLv~\

in that year with George Beadle,6 and Edward Fate6

But it is not only for his scientific contributions,

unique as they are,  that we hoped he would agree to address

us this evening.  Joshua Lederberg has the gift of tongues.

As an articulate,  literate and rational spokesman, he has

transmitted the spirit and art of science to those in our

society for whom science is not a primary concern.  And since


3

it is our hope that this series of lectures will aim at com-
                                  sphere

municating with a larger p*ubi.ic and a bruader 3@XBXX, Doctor

Lederberg is superbly qualified to speak to us tonight.

He has chosen for his title "Intervention:  The promul-

gation of the good."  It's a great pleasure and honor for me

to introduce the first William S. Paley lecturer, Doctor

Joshua Lederberg.

LEDERBERG:  Thank you, Alec.  Friends.  In putting my

thoughts together for a presentation this evening on such a

pretentious subject as science and society, I found that I

could well use all of my time in apologies for my presumption,

or folly, in accepting an invitation to speak on such a sub-

ject, with all of the added peril of exposing myself before

my friends.  My super-ego won't let me get away with such an

easy evasion, and it may be the only way to answer my own

question,  'What am I doing here?" if I just get down to the

substance rather than apologizing for how I'm in this fix.

                                             .         LLq
                                                            1
I do have to say that I hj con-
         bring

sciously aware that I m much more zeal than insight into
pursuing questions

$QBXl8~5IB about the value of science; and I should

,

say f+& as a personal apologia,
  )                    that one of the arousing

stimuli for my concern about the question of value rather than
             G&.-k

content was the fear t&2 molecular biology might be harnessed

to a military technology race with a many-sided escalation of
                 k

research and development 9n biological warfare.
            c\


    Happily, just recently we have reached a global agree-

ment, which was signed l?pt .A.pr~l   April l,Sth, just last

month

  7 L that greatly reduces the chances of this happening.
But the torment that this portending eventuality evoked in my
own mind has been one of a number of reasons for a continued

reexamination of the premise' 4 that the development of knowledge
is always the promulgation of the good.  And this is essentially
the theme that I hope to explore this evening.

   In various efforts through different channels that I
have been stumbling through in trying to understand some aspects
of science and society, I have found myself often frustrated
at not having developed a well-defined theory or method, cer-
tainly none of the kind that I would find indispensable in my
pursuits in biological research.  This,  of course,  labels me

as an amateur,

     However, I note some consolation in the text of a book,
the reading of which I would certainly commend to you as prob-
ably a far more profitable use of an hour or more of your time

than listening to my words on the matter.  It appeared some

twenty years ago, by Bernard Barber* called "Science and
the Social Order," and I'd like to quote a few passages from
                   &Lx-     - ;Q-Jde,
the introduction thereto by Professor Bm(?) K. WNC#XE(?).
        1952        b+ LL
    In XXXX, Professor Mez%&-Z ) asked:  LL How does it happen

that the sociology of science is still a largely unfulfilled
promise rather than a highly developed special field of knowledge,


5

cultivated jointly Sy social, physical and biological scien-

tists? What are its present resources and prospects? And

after a rather dismal prospect of the past and an optimistic
                                   has

evaluation of what Professor Barber(&XZX to say in his
                                              r
present work, he goes on to say that the relative neglect of

this subject by physical and biological scientists perhaps
requires little explanation; after all, specialization in
science calls for devoted concentration of effort, and the

sociology of science is not their m&ier.  That means:   not

mine.

    Hard at work on research in their own science, they're
scarcely in a position to take up yet another life as sociol-

ogists.  Furthermore, current practices and assumptions in
the world of natural science may militate against their de-
veloping even a casual interest in the linkages of science and

social structure.'

                    prevail
     For example, there may @DX&i%Z among these scientists
the assumption that the history of science is comprised G` L
                            +!

succession of great minds -- an assumption with an easy plaus-
ibility, since turning points in the history of science are
indeed commonly associated with great scientists.  Standing

on such an assumption, scientists may readily lose sight of
the less visible social processes which play their indispensable

part.

In paying its homage to these great minds, society may


    inadvertently reinforce that asscmption.  E_nonyq, the prac-
~,., tice of affixing a scientist's name to his discover:r, as with
3e~~1 Burroughs'
  J            ?\uw..tk'5,
   WXEW@W!(?) Law or Plank cl,?) Constant, Nobel Prizes and

lesser testimonials, and nationalistic claims to scientific
                                  contributions
preeminence, which lead to a focus on the m of

one's own nationals, the virtual anonymity of the lesser breed
of scientists whose work,         'i-L&L&L.
      indispensable  Professor Mert&n(T) postulates at
least, is            for the accumulation of scientific

knowledge -- these and similar circumstances may all reinforce
an emphasis on the great men of science and a neglect of the
social and cultural contexts which have significantly aided

or hindered their achievements.

I have to add, there is another problem about the

difficulty of the further pursuit of the area, which Professor
i,&;i+,

M. himself was so important in pioneering, and this is
an effect that I believe I have read has been attributed to

Dante, for having stultified the further development of Italian
literature for many centuries by the sheer magnitude of his
        accomplishment
intellectual m.  This is otherwise called "He's

a hard act to follow."

I will have more to say about the role of the social

sciences as disciplines in the pursuit of this subject a little

later on.  Meanwhile, after having had considerable agonies
about the chaotic structure of what it was that I had to

present, I found that I could proceed with somewhat wiser


resignation if I ad.mitted that I did not have an explicit

theory of Western culture -- and one would certainly be needed

to help trace the influence of scientific knowledge on that

society which is the subject of our discourse.

I perhaps can be slightly less apologetic, although

not less pained, if this then excuses me, to describe my re-

marks as discursive criticisms, and I will be most happy of

all if they are really provocative so that a professional

scholar in this field can attain a new level of synthetic

formulation in response to these scattered remarks.

Since this is to be -- this is -- my own words now are --

an inaugural lecture in a series that I hope will have some

continuity and a serious consideration of the impact of science

on society,            privileged
       I may perhaps be m to suggest a program

for the further development of the subject.
      consider                    First of all, we
                actors(?)

have to m various actions.  The one you have in front

of you represents one category of amateurs.  We have no method

whatsoever, by the standards of social science or social phil-

osophy.  We know something about one piece of the subject, and

we have every man's perfect knowledge about the way in which

society runs and works, and particularly ought to run.

Social scientists are an important roster of candidates

for such discussions.  There are not many that can be found

further than fifty miles from this location, but there are a

great many within this purview who, I think, could comment


much more cogently and knowledgeably about many asgects of

this subject than I could.  They may perhaps be a little bit

overwhelmed by the demands for empirical verification in a

field that does not lend itself very well for this.   Ghe of

the paradigms of social science in some of its manifestations

is to imitate physics, or even biology, as closely as possible.

Complex systems do not always lend themselves to ex-

plicit statistical analysis and verification when it comes

to the most important issues,  and there is always a tension
    deciding

about Z!GBGXXwlrp: whether to work on something important or some-

thing unverifiable.

there

We then have social philosophers, of which XX&!@ are

many1 and among whom there are some who could offer a great
                     cogent

deal that would be of most ~@~XXX relationship to our subject.

And perhaps the best that you could find would be those who

have dabbled in all of these areas.  A social philosopher who

has not known what it is like to attempt an empirical study
         se;; sxc.~Ls

in the social s-&u&es, and has not known the flavor of dis-

covery in the natural sciences,  may not be well equipped to
discuss at least half of the equation that relates the impact

of science and society.

society

A program for the study of science and X~~SXB~Q might

also discuss the institutional framework that could maximize

the final output -- and I perhaps will have some time to come

back to that, but I will leave it to you to answer the question

!
.-.'


ff? SU7,-2 ii1 3 great fux+.herance af ou1: understanding and knowl-

edge of the field.

of

A remark about tile standing EX social science, strictly

and narrowly considered,  and its relationship to studies of

science and society.  I find it remarkable that the epochal

*dorks in this                             kksdey.~
         Zield are done by people like Professor Mu
                                    social

and Professor Barber(;$), who are eminent sz@EXXX scientists,

and WhG, tjhen they write on this subject, are, in fact, speak-

ing social philosophy.

There is a considerable effort of social science,

naturally considered,  in fields that are connected with science.

But I'm rather perplexed to find how sharply it has focused

on the social organization of science as a discipline and as

a profession,  and that means that rather than its content, it
is

%X the system of prestige and power and awards and reinforce-

ments,  ~3s seen by the layman,  that has preoccupied the major

attention of empirical research in this field.
     This

!XE@ is obviously a very important subject, especially

since scientists sometimes tend to pretend that these matters
                                                autonomous
don't exist,  and to pretend that they operate as 2CXKm

entities in search only of the truth, without an understanding

of the perturbing mechanisms that may be added on as a super-

structure towards that particular pursuit.

But I do have to ask whether such studies on the status


1J

with t!le actual content of good science an.3 lshat it cdn do

for society than a study of political poli;er xouid have on

the quality of poetry -- and I think  khere is much in common

between t?lese fields.

And I realize that measures -- that the intellectual

cmrer,cy of scientific i,deas dGes not lend itself to easy

statistical evaluation, but I simplyy do not see how we can

really further the understanding of science, even as a social
phenomenon
w , without going more deepiy into its actual content

than more than a very few investigators from the social sciences

have attempted to do.

I realize how difficult this is for the non-expert.

It poses the complementary problem to what I quoted from Pro-
fessor kZk%~) ; the natural scientist seeking another life
in social science would have his counterpart in the social

scientist trying to get into the actual substance of the

fields that he was addressing.  mA--DIEIL3SftED

C~~~~~tkiat~wor~in~-all--ri~ht?

Take-it-off--i-s-~~~-I-~ xsually heard ~about.  (LWGXTER) And

it is difficult for me to see how this goal can really be accom-

plished without following the precept that was mentioned in my

quotation             w&L-y+.
     from Professor Meww about teamwork between


11

biologists and physicists and zocial scientists in exploring

the actual content and the ways of reaching the goals that

the scientist has reached.  There are very few studies in this

field.  I don't have a list of them, but it would be a short

list I can number on one hand.

     X can think of the work of one of
                   ix, i, ;-ii,. Professor Barber's,@i
former colleagues and students, Rfl Fox, for example:
Exneriment Perilous, a book about the operations of a medical

research team that involved a very close collaboration with

such a study.

    Because of the difficulty of cross-disciplinary collab-

oration, the idea of a sociology of sociology has a certain

appeal, and I suppose there's a certain mischievous malice in

thinking that perhaps the  status system and the values and the
rewards and the empty trappings of another field deserve just
as m-uch attention as do those that win the Nobel Prizes in

biology and medicine and physics.

    But there's also some substance to this notion, and I
would say that work like that of David Krantz(?) on the schools
of psychology is a very exciting step in that direction, as a
self-examination of the structure of a field, of the develop-
ment of aspects of thought wit'nin it, taking a-ccount of and

methodologies

using the M&X?UQS~~ of the social sciences and not being
merely poetic in the intellectual criticism of the content,

but not being unaware of it.


12

    Keanwhile,  I'm sorry to say that a bit of rather bad
history is already being written about events in fields like
molecular biology that are within my own recollection, and in

                                                               , ^
large part, again, for lack of effective c%t..nt7with the

actual participants and workers in the field.  I'm referring
to a piece that Wyatt(?) had in Nature just some few weeks
ago about the response to the discovery by Avery, within a

few steps from here, that DNA was the effective agent in the

pneumococcal transformation, and which I believe he has totally

misinterpreted.  However, I will be speaking more about that

subject tomorrow afternoon.

   Far from being critical about the role and purposes
that the social sciences can play, there are many urgent chal-
lenges to them in areas that have much to do with the details
of the operation of the nitty-gritty scientific work.   And

I'm rather puzzled, for example,  that as far as I'm aware,
there has never been a serious study of the functioning of
the grants-review committees of the National Science Founda-

tion and of the National Institutes of Health.   These are
operations in which I have spent many months and years of
cumulative effort, and many others of you have as well.  They
are extremely interesting social phenomena.  They represent
attempts at the evaluation on single unidimensional scales
of the efforts and labors and aspirations and potentials of
different groups of scientific effort, and I'm not sure that


13

anyone really understands what those priority scores mean,

how they can be related from one field to another, what are

the social dynamics of the process by which such evaluations

are made -- and yet,  these lead to decisions that are very

much the stuff of what social policy about the actual content

of science is going to consist of.

    In the sociology of medicine, we have many studies that
      sharply
are more l9CpXQ? focused on here-and-now problems, and I think

have made an important contribution to our understanding of
                                      we

the nature of medical care,  and KH now understand that there's

something more than the availability of the service, of a

health service on the counter) that's involved in the effectua-
tion of care in a population.  But we still do not have a

meaningful index of health; and lacking that index, we really

have no way to evaluate what our purposes are, or to assess
                                     billion

how well we are doing in what involve multi--H-dollar

investments, a great deal of social dissension and the commit-

ment of the careers of many, many people, including many here.

I think this is a task which certainly requires the

skills of the social scientists,  since I think we have long
                              physical

gone past the view that there is any single @Q%SBXX parameter
    could                        health
that 2WSH define what we mean by the MEMSMQ of an individual

or the health of a population.  The perceptions of large num-
                                  beyond
bers of people, as molded by forces that go far BBl4ZSW their

objective biological status, are not only important in that


evaluation, but from all that we know about, for example,

psychosomatic medicine,  also feed back very closely into our

actual state of health.

    And finally,  there is one pervasive policy problem,

which I might label generally as behavior under risk, which

connects matters like insurance, the safety of drugs and food

additives,  legal liability for negligence or for malpractice,

appropriate policies that balance environmental hazards against

economic benefits, traffic accidents, and even such matters

as the validation of scientific statements out of the labora-

tory,  as the expression "Gambling With Truth," the name of

an excellent book by Isaac Levy, would indicate.  And this

is a subject which has only begun to reach the level of atten-

tion that it deserves in confronting the perception that people

have, and the appropriateness and the rationality of their

behavior, when there are only probabilistic judgments that

can be made out of the outcome of a series of alternative

policy judgments.

     It pervades all of law,  all of the scientific basis

for regulatory policy, and we understand very little about it

except that it's very hard to see the rationale for why people

at the same time will buy insurance on an airplane that takes

them to Las Vegas.  (A RIPPLE OF LAUGHTER)

    I could suggest an agenda for studies that deserve early
            or
priority, ZLX at least as a general framework in a program on


15

.i
.-

science
2SIXSgRZ and sccicty; ?xut basicall~~ speaking,  they have to do

with the sociology o f knowledge and its cmverse.  The sociol-

ogy has been much talked about by sociologists, at least since

Hannhe im(?) , and roughly speaking, they Yhavc to do 7with the
                                   it

question of who kncws what, and why C- 3;hat %X is that leads

to the availability of certain categories of expert knowledge

in different elements 05 the community.
       realize
     I V 1'9 oversimplifying description, but I'd also

like to suggest the converse issue, rihich is:   so what?  What

are the consequences to the  social order of the differential

distribution of knowledge within w social system, and of the

intrusion of  new information within that system?  I'd call the

latter the problematics of science, or the problcmatics of

technopathy, if you went to take a pessimistic view of the

matter -- the social impact of knowledge.

Since the lessom of C3mesis and of the myth of Pro-

metheus, it's been apparent that  students of culture have

always had some ambivalence about the value of knowledge; and

the easy presumption that ?Je as scientists have, that it is

always bstter to know more,  is a rather modern phenomenon,

and still one rather isolated.  It is one shared by a minority

- of the 550rld's population,  and perhaps not much JLlore than a

bare majority of JOestern society.  And I think we should not

take it for granted that it is better for a communit:T that there

bc iTtOT knowledge in it, and certainly not without having some


16

                          knowledge
further speci' -ication as to what that i=DmE is and where

it's distributed.

knowing more

Now my own prejudices are all in favor of l#XBMmm,

and I think I'm able to justify and rationalize those prejudikes

on a further examination of the issue,  but those judgments are

necessarily tempered by some of the fears that I've mentioned

earlier, and I know that some of you have in other directions,

and I'd like to put it as a matter of careful.%%+ analytical in-

vestigation to see if we can provide an outline of the ways

and the regions in which more knowledge is good or bad.  This
                      premissa

will involve an exposure of your $$BBSBU about what consti-

tutes good and evil, but we'd certainly be better off for it.

I'm a little puzzled to find very little work on the

question of the then polemical exercises, and it's very easy

to find the scientists marshaled on one side and the anti-

scientists marshaled on another, merely repeating what they
st;zd out with.  We'll find the Mumfords and the Charlie
            Bos k

Reisches(?) and the Kosc achs(?) all talking about all of the
          r

evil consequences of the objectivization of the world picture
Of                            truth
BM the pursuit of the scientific-m-oriented ideal as op-

posed to the humanly-oriented opposition that they then pose.

And conversely, there are any number of equally defensive re-

actions against such sets of propositions.

I'm not aware that there has been a studious effort

to look at the problem, if not empirically (which would be


17

                           we
very,  very difficult; %3X don't have global experiments at

our disposal to compare cultures in which this amount of

science has been permitted and others in which some has been
                              confounding

restricted; there are usually too many other B

variables), but I think it is a matter that is capable of

deeper analysis than it has received, and certainly in less

polemical fashion than it has received up to this time.

After we have disposed of these grand issues of the

basic values of knowledge and of the social forces that are

concerned about the kind of knowledge that different elements

in the community will seek and will have, and why, I think we

will be better able to get down to some of the political and

resource-allocation issues that face us, that face the Con-

gress,  that are so much the concern of those who are looking

for some formula by which to assess technology, by which to

know whether an SST is going to be better or worse, or to know

whether lOO,OOO,OOO a year or 500,000,030 a year should be

spent on large accelerators, and so on and so forth.

It is not impossible to answer such questions without

the prior insights of a more global overview, and usually they
                 insights

are answered without such $XXX&WD, but I think we would be

better off if we understood better the general framework of

our problem.

Before I go into my own amateurish efforts at scanning

the converse of the sociology of knowledge -- I don't even know


what to call that that would receive ready recognition -- I

find myself obliged to listen to an inner voice that cautions

about the authenticity of the pronouncements that a scientist
                       YOn/OP
is obliged to make.  Jacques Gounot(?) has spoken very elo-

quently about this in referring to authentic discourse.   Be
does not dispute the right or the obligation of the scientific
                          values

expert to speak on questions of 2E%XUX, or morals, of ethics,

of aesthetics, and so on, but he does demand, as part of the

inner rationale of science, that there be a clear identifica-

tion of those premises and of those statements, that when a

scientist does speak out on& an issue where his credentials

and prestige of himself and of the community from which he

arises, that he take pains to distinguish what it is that he

does have some special knowledge about, and why, and wherein

he is speaking as another hopefully thoughtful citizen, but

with no more authority, no more authenticity in his pronounce-
                  man's,

ments, than would be the next XiXX.

And that inner voice also tells me that there are a few

matters on the public scene where my experience as a geneticist

has a certain relevance,  where there is some factual informa-

tion or rational analysis of a situation, that may have some

bearing on an important public discourse. And I think before

I go on to the very much more speculative items that I would

certainly label as subjects more of my avocational and passion-

ate interest than one to which I can claim any degree of


19

professional authenticity, that I should say something about

these subjects -- and I will pull them out of the day's news.
                             problem

36i    I think many of us felt that the &3ZBXEM of abortion
had been laid to rest reasonably effectively with the passage
of the liberal legislation in the State of New York, and were

rather astonished at the reversals that have been suggested
                        statement

by President Nixon's recent B to Cardinal Cooke on

this particular question.  I suspect that this will help to
fuel a very considerable reexamination and reaction to liberal

laws like those of New York State, and may cause very con-
siderable difficulty indeed in other states which have not

yet proceeded to this step.

       clearly       I hope that my language conveys

very, very BXHXXB$ where my biases are on this ethical ques-
tion, but I'd better come out and say very, very clearly that
I do have value judgments to make on this matter that are in-

dependent of my views as a biologist, and that the impairment
of a woman's right to an abortion at an early stage of her

pregnancy is, in my view,  an intolerable inference with the
disposition of her own body,

This is obviously very much connected with another

ethical question; namely, when does that right of disposition
of her own body interfere with the rights of another human

being? -- which is the same as to say, when, in the develop-
ment from a fertilized egg, do we now have a human being no
longer a part, a dispensable part, of the woman's own body?


                                         afford
That is not a question to which biologists can 2%X3ZE7D a L-ery
                                   criteria
specific answer,  since we have no scientific i!SSEHSY that

define when is a human being. I have no exterior statement

to match that up against.  We will each speak from a certain
                            question

set of convictions and feelings on that @5X-, and I think

that the argument should center on precisely that issue. I

think none of this would deviate very strongly from one form
           (7)
or another of Kuntz' categorical imperatives; and that is that

in our dealings anywhere within the world, that we deal with
          special

people as very E.@GSXX subjects, we do not deal with people

as things.  The question is, when is a people, when is a

person?  And this is certainly a matter of very considerable

controversy.

Fu'hat I can point to, speaking as a biologist, are some

of the consequences of adopting a view contrary to the one

that I've espoused.  For the sake of argument, let us consider

the consequences of the point of view that the fertilized egg,

or that the early foetus or some comparable stage that is now

regarded as within the legitimate sphere of action of a woman

and her physician in conducting an abortion $+&hat  are the

consequences of regarding a conceptus as a human being, not

necessarily cloaked with all of the Constitutional privileges

of citizenship,  since minors do not have all of the Constitu-

tional privileges of citizenship.  One does not even have to

take the view that abortion is equivalent to murder to ask

i
-"'


21

the question whether there is some element, inportatnt element,

of personality inherent in the early coaceptus.

Taking the narrowest possible view of the statement of

privileges and rights to human existence of the conceptus, I

have to point out that there are and would be very grave con-

sequences indeed to the rest of our way of life, and to our

further proceeding in medicine, were that hypothesis to be

continued.  The biological data,       c&A
                    which is very familiar to

all students of human reproduction in a scientific sense, is

that for every four pregnancies that reach term, there is at

least one conceptus that fails, that will abort spontaneously.

This number                       plausible
        -- this is a low estimate.  The @QWBBXH estimates

of reproductive wastage through early foetal loss range any-

where from 25 to 50 percent.  It is very difficult to estimate

the frequency 'of very early losses of fertilized eggs and

very early embryos that do not even achieve nidation.

I would like to point out that the view that these

conceptuses have a right to live would impose an obligation,

a moral obligation upon us as human beings, towards them if

this is to be consistent with our views towards other human

beings, that we are not likely to fulfill@, and that if we

were to attempt it,  would result in utmost disaster.
              disasters
     One of the m that would be a consequence of

such an attempt arises from the fact that a considerable part
of

35X this foetal wastage, perhaps a third, is represented by


22

conceptuses that have. a grossly abr~ormal c`hromosome constitu-

tion.   Some of these are so grossly abnormal that they simply

could not survive delivery and birth even were they to reach

the stage; but others are of kinds that we can recognize as

rather serious monstrosities which are, however, capable of

living. There is a high proportion of trisomies($, a high
proportion
- of x
A   -. 2.        -chromosome variations among these conceptuses
that are filtered out at present by some natural process of

selection against them,

since

    But we would be ver hard put, XXXEE we do encourage
         &wdrd5
Turner's F  syndrome and Kleiner's(?) syndrome and other

anomalies of various degrees; we do not regard these persons
                              Were
as candidates for infanticide,  XEZX we to make no distinction

between the personal rights to existence of the conceptus and

that of a baby, I don't see how we could draw any very clear-
cut line between the survival of such conceptuses and those

that have apparently normal chromosomal or genie constitutions.

So the first consequence of the consistent pursuit of
                        being

a policy that says the conceptus is a human Z5E33Gj would,

morally speaking, have to be a very diligent effort to con-
serve

XXXXE that life which is now wasted.  I'm not putting a moral

opprobrium on allowing that life to disappear when we have no

knowledge of it, but I simply do not see how we cotild con-

sistently stand by and complacentlv allow it to happen if it

were cloaked with the moral attribute of humanity which is


23

connected with that hypothesis.

Furthermore, I presume that there would be a consider-

able moral imperative to proceed with further investigative

work which would allow for the survival of foetuses of a kind

which now spontaneously disappear.  This would be succor to

the sick and ailing of a kind that we do not now deny to other
    stages        development
later XXXJ$XX of human B.

Alternatively, we might have to put a categorical end

to further research on maintaining pregnancy under conditions

ef threatened abortion, since if we ever do reach the point

where we have the option of allowing a damaged conceptus to

survive, I do not see how we could be morally entitled not to

use that knowledge,  and in those circumstances we'd better

not have it.

Now this is not an absolute and categorical answer to

the assertion that abortion should be made illegal,  It is

pointing out some of the consequences of pursuing the philo-

sophical concept on which much of that argument rests.   And

I do not think that we believe, although this is a presumption

and on the other side?& of the line of an authentic discourse --

this is a moral judgment -- but I do not believe that the com-

munity really wants to set us on a path that will result in

20 to 30 percent of our live births consisting of overt mon-

strosities -- and yet, I see this as the inevitable logical
                             ml-

consequence of a consistent pursuit of that m
                           philosophical


24

precept.

    There may be arguments on the basis of which the ques-

tion of the law of abortion should have been considered in

the first place,  or shouldnow be reconsidered, but T hope

that if this precept is used as the basis for it, that its

consequences are very carefully thought out.

    To turn to a distantly related subject, I have been told

of an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Associa-
tion, which the press has taken up/quoting the Journal rather
than an anonymous editorial writer, as having taken a very
strong stand favoring a moratorium $? research related to

transplantation of ova in man.  The bases for examining that

question, I think, are fairly straightforward.  Hanipulations

involving the fertilized egg in vitro theoretically do stand
                                      --
some risk of unintended damage to the ovum and the possibility,

therefore, of disruption of development, and possibly of con-

genital malformation at the $% outcome.

    And I would certainly be the first to say that one could

hardly morally pursue an investigation of this kind in man

without taking very careful account of the risks that are in-
herent in the procedure along the lines that I've just indi-

cated.

    Before we put this in a category of a negative categorical

imperative -- and an editorial demanding a moratorium would

appear to be in that situation -- I would think it would,


25

however,  also be necessary to point to a number of other situa-

tions in which there are either grave or unknown risks con-

nected with the future of a fertilized egg.

For example,  among the techniques of contraception

that are still widely advocated, and that some believe to be
                                  maternal

preferable from the point of view of both MXSXSHX and foetal
                  hormonal

safety to the use of l%BWHXX interventions,  are the use of

spermicides.  Traditionally, these range from distilled water
tc substituted guin~lines(fi.  I am simply not aware of any

reliable study on the possible teratogenic effect of any of

these agents,  including distilled water, as they might be

applied to sperm, and as they might be expected occasionally
                   prevention

to be ineffective in the @B of conception.  And I

very seriously would place just as grave an interdiction on

such manipulations of sperm prior to fertilization as I would

on the transfer of fertilized eggs.  There is no reason, 2
                                                more

priori, to believe that these stages are BBKE or less vulner-
      chemical

able to jCH$BXW and physical insults from exterior sources.

And I simply wonder why no fuss whatever has ever been made

of this question, when the question of an oval transplant to

a woman desiring a child by her own husband m- who

may have the opportunity to circumvent a blockage of the
==-

v Fallopian tubes by surgical transplanta-

tion of her ova after in vitro fertilization becomes the sub-

-.

ject of so much comment.


26

And finally, I would also have to remark that the

studies over many, many years of Witch?(?) and of many other
investigators have shown in experimental material very,  very
clearly that overripe eggs are very good candidates for con-

genital malformation; eggs that are maintained too long before
ovulation or held too long before fertilization, in a variety

of ,_
  soecies.  This is very clearly known in rabbits.   There

has been only a  littl e epidemiological investigation on this

question in man, since w have so little opmrtunity to look
              ew

at the age of an &m -- that is, how much time has elapsed

since ovulation -- that is involved in a given pregnancy, and
the results of epidemiological study are, to say the least,

equivocal.

This has a certain bearing on other preferred methods

of contraception; namely, the rhythm method,  The rhythm
method has no teratogenic consequence when it is effective,
but hey
L when it fail@ it will be because of some marginal
miscalculation about the time of ovulation in relation to the

time of impregnation,  and at least half of those miscalcula-

tions must then involve eggs at the latter end of their period
cf fertilizability, and therefore also open the theoretical
                                     consequence

possibility of congenital malformation as a v of

this practice surrounding the point of fertilization.

   These are questions of comparable gravity and interest
       surgical
to those of E%Q@xX transplantation of ova,  It's perfectly


27

great deal of speculation about the further social utilities

or disutilities of its use in other ways.  The other (that is,
the rhythm method) has been used, or has failed, for many,

                     noticed
many years,  and no one has H&BY&W3 an abundant crop of con-
genital malf OrrLlatioixz as a consequence.

    I need hardly tell you that not noticing that phenomenon
is still consistent with there being a 20 or 30 or 40 percent
difference in the incidence of congenital malformations in
that group compared to others -- and,  just speculatively, you

'know, that could be many thousands of malformed babies.

     A third issue very much in the arena of public atten-
tion, and therefore--d relating public policy to science,
and certainly a legitimate subheading within the concerns of
science and society -- concerns the genetics
                       3$XWXBB of IQ. This is

a subject on which I have in the past spoken at very consider-
able length at Stanford, but Professor Shockley(?j keeps talk-
ing about it even more than I do; and -- (A RIPPLE OF LAUGHTER)
                  of assertions

-- he's made a number m that have aroused people
in various ways.  He asked the National Academy of Sciences
to pass a resolution that the heritability of intelligence is

a large number.  That is an innocuous statement within a well-

define- context; it is undoubtediy correct; and of course,
all of the mischief arises from a misunderstanding of the


26

context  in which that assertion 5s meaningful.  The assertion

ic meaningful,  just as the cor?ceFt of heritability is meaning-

ful,  onI:- within the framework cf a i_"airl:r we11-defined and

fair IL:,- 'XIi.fOr~ enVirO3nPZt .

    I wouldn't l,z.ant to insist that lower-middle-class Eng-

land is a uniform environment,  but it is sufficiently unbiased

with rcspct to the distribution of adopted children to do

well Ei>OLTgh for this SUPPOSE.  The comparison of monozygotic

f twins who have been separated near the tirm of birth, have

been adopted into environments that are presumably only ran-

domly related to the environment of their co-twin, is almost

available

the only method that we have ZEZCZm to us for asking and

answering the C~iiE?StrlOil of heritabiiity,  And it  is indeed

true that within that f'ramwork one finds heritabilities of

the order of .7 or .S; that is,  something over one-half of

the variants in the measured IQs of a reasonably homogeneous

population of a given ethnic group is likely to be found to

be heritable, and therefore stands a good chance of being, in

some fundamental sense, of genetic origin.

     It is also trize that there are phenotypic differences
in intelligence between blacks and whites in this country,

taken in the large.  Roughly speaking,  large populations of

blacks, taken indiscriminately from around the country, will

score about one standard deviation lower, some 13 or 15 IQ

units lower, than a comparable population of whites.   Both


29

distributions have the standard deviation that I mentioned,

and not even Shockley(?) will deny that there is genius to be

found among blacks, as it has sometimes been found among whites
                      p\j~u"&s\p:

as well; but his statement about the theatype of the American

black population is, again, unarguable, And our problem arises

when we attempt to put these allegations together, and we must

then, of course, part company.

    Shockley( ?) has made remarks to the effect that he be-
          not
lieves that X33X only are there variations in intelligence

having a genetic basis in different segments of the population,
                        coded(+j

but furthermore, that this is color-c -J that therefore

the colcr of a group oz A individuals has some predictive value

in describing not only their intelligence as measured by an

IQ test -- and that's an empirical observation -- but also in
                                                 under-

the assessment of the genetic factors that he asserts to m

lie that IQ, and that is not an observation; that is an in-

ference that purports to say that the sources of variance of

IQ within a middle-class white population are comparable to
                  variance*

the environmental sources of ~~Lz~%~between the white popula-
tion and the black population of this country.

Not to point that out is an arrant misuse of the word

"heritability,"  The word "heritability" is as "heritability'*

does within a specific context. And of course, the mischief

in passing such a resolution would be the likely failure of
public understanding of the meaning of that kind of a statement.


30

      But far beyond that, while it easy, and one might even

say appropriate, to be rather angry at racist allegations of
                          doubt
this kind -- and there is no ZSEHX about that label; at least

I'm certainly willing to stand by it -- in a deeper level, I

really wonder what the fuss is all about,  and whether it would

be regarded as anything more than name-calling if the various

Frties to this controversy really fully understood the mean-

ing of the statement "the genetic basis of intelligence."
   All that investigators in this field could ever hope

to accomplish, to learn, would be an enumeration of the genetic
factors that will predispose to a given outcome in some speci-

fied series of environments.  At the present time, we face the

socially intolerable and experimentally frustrating situation
that these environments are not equalized, nor are they likely
to be in the very near future.  I really can foresee no circum-
                                              chil-

stance, within my own ambience, whereby a group of black HlCCS%
dren could be reared in a completely color-blind fashion. If

they're not discriminated against, they're likely to be fawned

over, and either is likely to be an egregious insult to their

appropriate development -- and as long as we are, as people

and as a country, as color-conscious as we are, whether for
socially admirable or socially detestable purposes, such ex-
periments simply are not possible.

But, hypothetically, we could imagine, somehow, some

specific common environment in which a representative group


31

of black and of white children mir;ht be assayed; and cnder
those circumstances, on that hypothesis, one could measure

the so-called heritability of the difference.

And it's perfectly conceivable that if one were to use
                    which

for such an environment the on e RBI&H has been that to which

the European white genotype has been adapted, that one might

find -- this is pure speculation, and 3: have neither belief

nor disbelief; I merely lay it on as a hypothesis that one
might make -- that one might find that there would be a detri-
ment in performance of the black children in such an environ-

ment.
              ccjua 1 l y

that  And one might w well find that if one changed
                      environmental
BXXX regime, and changed the m circumstance54 in
which the development of that intelligence were tested, that
one would find exactly the opposite outcome -- because even

the most precise measurements of heritability, within the con-
text of this kind of a study,  cannot measure the innate value

of a human soul, even in biological terms.  They cannot pre-
dict the environmental -- the developmental outcome in all
possible environments; they can only give you a retrospective
summary of what that development is in an environment that has
indeed been specified.

    There are observations on black children which are
heavily contaminated by environmental bias and are, therefore,
totally untrustworthy, but they do give some indications,


32

which one must treat very skeptically, of early differences

in psychomotor behavior,  and there may be different patterns

of neurological maturation that are controlled by genes that

have different frequencies in the black and the white popula-

                    -to
tion -- and my answer 3% that is not exactly "So what?" 14~

answer to that, speaking strictly as a scientist, is that ;t-

would be an exciting challenge to know the details of the de-

velopmental processes in question, and then, if we chose, we

would have a very high likelihood of being able to provide

environmental measures that could reshape that development

towards whatever ends that community desired.

     This discussion has taken no account of whether IQ is

good or bad for you, which are value judgments that I don't

think I need to go into, but I'm deeply distressed that there

is such a fundamental misunderstanding about the word "genetic"

when it's applied in a social context,  that it has misled many

of my friends and has misled many -liberal social thinkers

into getting very much more excited about this entire issue

than the matter warrants,

The question of genetic factors in intelligence ought

to be looked at in exactly the same light as genetic factors

in diabetes or in any other of a number of human traits: and
                         the

the more we know about them, WHX more we have the opportunity

to provide intervention that may be capable of doing some good

in response to what the people in various communities would

.


33

about the kinds of differences that might pertain to these

populations -- and I mention'them only to clariEy what the

nature of the argument might conceivabl;r Se ahout, rather than
   assertion

any m concerning the outcome.
            reason
     The XXXXX& that few yenetici sts have wanted to get into

this field is not Secause of any bias against inquiry about

the genetics of races in th?is country, as Shockleyj?) has
                                                about
accused us of.  The reason is that it appears to be just EQ53SXB
          .-
       ._
the moS* rewarding arena for scientific inquiry that one

could get into, because the entire question is so heavily

contaminated by environmentai differences that we really do
                           or

not know how to assess 25X to compensate for.

Well, these are matters in which f think I have the

right to speak with some authority; that is, some of my
                   would
colleagues' faces -- X %&&X24 get some apologies on the part

of my colleagues if I misspoke -- or some very quick answers

from them, I should say, on that matter.

Letat me turn very quickly to the outlines of the in-

quiry XECX about the impact of science on our culture, that

I think does need to be deepened if we're to have some under-

standing about what the unease is about and what the complaints

are all about.  This is simply an attempt to systemize a com-

pendium of allegations about what science has done, and I don't


34

@think I have an;rthing new to report in this f\yay,  except to
                                  characteristics
give you a list, and a list that has some -W~XEE of

some kind of order to it.

    I will try not to be defensive when I speak cultural
                                                                  I*
situations that are in some measure responses to the intro-
duction of knowledge, and to the development of technology
based on that knowledge. And of course, I've already touched
on one of the deep sources of confusion in the public reactions

to science and technology; namely,  the difference between the

two.  LAnd every scientist here would bristle at being confused
with an engineer or a technologist or a technocrat, and I
guess most of us here are scientists, or physicians using
science in a highly scientific sense, and certainly put our-
selves on a very different side of the fence from those who,

as the saying goes, would like to pave over America with con-

crete, or do any of the other technological miracies that are

attributed to that other element in our technoiogical society.
   That's a reasonable complaint; that is to say, I think

those distinctions ought to be made.  X think we scientists
                           sending

ought to wince when we are credited for E#@XZFQ men to the,bf M',:~w~ i
which we did very little to help, and many of us tried to

frustrate, at least politically-if not technically, and we
don't deserve credit for that accomplishment. We've done

very,  very little.  Those are technological accomplishments

of a very high order, and possibly even of greater merit than


35

I might have thought at some eariier stage in our own national

policy.  B,uC%his is an area of public concern,  but I also
                5                                           we are

think we can't cop out that easily.  As scientists, SEQEUS
not that readily disconnected from the technological frame-

work which,                justifying
      by and large, ends up @D%S@Wq the public and
social expenditure in the work that we do.  And every time
any scientist94 pleads that it is a good idea to fund research
or to provide his own research grant because it will have

useful. results for people's benefit, he is making not a scien-
tific but a technological plea; and I think too many of us
                                         refute

have used that argument to be able totally to m the con-
                                                                so

nection between science and technology that does loom BX large
in the public mind -- so there is good technology and there
is bad technology, plainly,  and we scientists are all in favor

of, by definition, good technology.

   For this discussion of the impact of knowledge, I can
hardly separate the science which by itself, being merely

knowledge, can have very little influence except on people's
beliefs -- and, of course, what a small thing that $ in a

culture, in contrast to the technology that builds the bridges
and the war machines, and so on.

   Well, this is to say that certainly in any schematic
analysis of these impacts, the influence of knowledge on the
ethical system of man's relationship to God, his understanding
of himself, which is another way of saying the same thing, and


36

of the sets of traditional beliefs that closely control his

everyday behavior, still today looms very large as one of
the major consequences of the acquisition of knowledge in
our rationalist culture.

   There's a very pretty parable along this line, and it

may even be a true story, although I've not investigated this

point, which is given by Loiston Sharp(?) in a book called

The Human Impact of Technoloqv, edited by Spicer(?) some while
                                                    of
ago, and it has to do with the effect of the introduction BE@

steel axes into an aboriginal culture in Northwest Australia.
These were Stone Age people who had lived for many years in
a harsh environment and within the framework of a rather elab-

orate social system in which this primitive tool, the stone ax,
played a very important part.

   In an intervention intended to do good, at a time after
there had been some lethal contacts between colonizing settlers
and the aboriginal tribe and a reserve was established for

their exclusive use, a mission was set up that began to dis-
tribute some of the good of Western technology, and the one

               focuses        steel
on which Sharp(?) IWWXBXX is the XD~ZX ax.  The steel ax is
obviously a better implement than a stone ax.    ought
                                 It lal@ke to

make possible an alleviation from toil, the possibility of
harvesting the goods of the earth more effectively, and a
better life for all the people involved.

Now it's very difficult to isolate this particular


37

va;riable from all of the other influences .on the acculturation

of this c;roug,  but it does nake at least a rather persuasive

parable.

Now it turns out that the stone ax was the center of

trade, of the economic life of these people, of their rela-

tionships with many other groups, because the stones had to

Se transported some hundreds of miles for the manufacture of

the axes o  There would be annual palavers involving the dif-

ferent tribes for the exchange of goods. These were highly

festive occasions, which were very meaningful in the life of

the people,  and they provided some of the important points

of -- well,  all the things that trade does even in modern

society, when you stop to think about it.
                       family

They were also the focus of m relationships. %

UN- T  skills
             he XISXXX for making a stone ax were known
                          -7
to the men, and only to the older men, and they had a tradi-

                                                       s&J; .\',C c :;

tional right of ownership on them; and the worm and the

younger men within %he tribe could borrow these axes in order

to do the various jobs around the home and the field that

H% had to be done, but it was always in a relationship of

deference and one that led to a degree of stability within

the society,  particularly as between the women and the men.

There were also totems connected with the stones, and

a good deal o f self-esteem was connected in the ownership of

these axes.  The do-good missionaries distributed the axes out


38

of the largesse of their will, which meant essential117 a ran-

dom distribution, or sometimes in exchange for servile behav-

ior on the -part of particular individuals within the group.

The women quickly learned how to get o.u+-+f them, women having

skills that you well know -- and everything went to _not.
                      of

The relationship 2X young to old deteriorated, because iv6

,the steel ax,                            language
        there was no precedent for the unique w

that meant that the ax had to belong to the elder.   It was

another type of object altogether.  it was not something that

required any special skill to make, and there was therefore

the technological obsolescence of that particular craftsman.

The trade relationships deteriorated, because there was no

longer any need for this relationship betweefi the tribes,

and the culture deteriorated absolutely.  And I guess we
would all see that's a bad thing.

And I suppose that is a parable for what many people

believe to be the latest of the consequences of innovation

in modern society,  Lest any of you leap to too rapid conclu-

sions on this point,  one does need to reflect on whether the
                                    whether

stability of a culture is always desired, SQXKWEK the sub-

servience of women in traditional cultures is one that should

always be Maintained,  as connected with the other totems.

There are, as always,  ambivalences in our views on such a
                     T-J;.;           ,-; )< '., s,
matter.  At least, I hope tw are, if y-e thinking right.

This parable does illustrate, in some way, the erosive


39

effect on traditional belief, not only of science, but Mz

technology.  If any child has at his command the whole

technae(?) of his community and, in fact, if he's likely to

know it even better than his parents, we have the post-

figurative society which Margaret Mead claims, and which is

such an obvious disaster that I think I would be willing almost

to accept the prescription of a moratorium in science to pre-

vent it, although I don't think it would.

    This is the argument that the old ought to learn from

the young, and I suppose it means that mother ought to learn

from the newborn baby with respect to how to live.

    Attitudes of organized skepticism introduced-- which

are such an essential attribute of science -- notonly intro-

ducednew data that have clashed head-on with traditional be-

liefs -- and I guess we'd have to go back a ways to look at

some of the facts about which there've been such collisions

and which are associated with the names of Galileo and Darwin

and Freud -- but they also represent a point of view about
authoritative statements,which is very difficult for any
political or ethical system to survive very long.  If every

act is going to be challenged, if every assertion is going to

have to be rationalized, if every member of a community has

an equal right to protest that the lights ought to be red to

go and green to stop, obviously social life cannot last very

much longer; and there is a very close connection between the


cohesion of a society arcund traditional authority and the
ability to reach this kind of coherence which is necessary
for social functioning to continue.

    The anomie, the sense of purposelessness which infects

so many today, is another all-too-obvious consequence of the

disappearance of exterior orientation, and I think science
does have to take some responsibility for that outcome.

nevertheless

   Now the religious impulse does run, m, very,

very deep, and we'll find that after a period of disruption
of one set of religious belief,  it's quite natural to see that
the Jesus freaks or some other types of sects will soon arise.

And I have to say -- I speak quite introspectively, and maybe
this is not as true of you as it is of me -- that the scien-
tist very self-consciously sublimates his religious impulses,
his sense of the irrational and of things which are purposes
that are axiomatic and self-understood and do not require
further examinationH and further criticism, that he can very
easily sublimate that within the program of the noble purposes
and the very exciting operations of his research.

   His assault on nature is very close to coming to God,
and there are some theologians who will even congratulate him

for that identification.  But I think scientists who are
actively busy with the framework of their own work are very
ill-equipped to realize how erosive the by-products of their
investigation are on the mere bystanders, the people who are


41

sitting by during cultural convulsiom and the disruption of

traditions and do not have the benefit of this kind of commit-

ment to a goal whose good is evident within itself, which is

what I think most scientists will view of their own scientific

investigation.

We have similar problems in the aesthetic sphere. I

find it quite possible to enjoy a rainbow and simultaneously

to reflect on the spectral dispersion of light, and to remem-

ber Newton's experiments and his erroneous conclusions there-

from,  and so on and so forth.  And to me, these are in no
conflict

W whatsoever with one another.  There are some whose

views and feelings I respect who do not share that immunity

from the intrusion of a cognitive and rational view of an

aesthetic situation,  and that is a fact of life that I think

we must respect, even if sometimes we don't understand it,

and perhaps it deserves somewhat deeper investigation.

I think that another thing that we need to do more than
                                       and

we have is to communicate to a public that is angry E@H hostile

about being deprived of sources of poetic inspiration, some
                                           texture

of that poetic inspiration which is part of the X3SXBSE of

scientific work itself.  That's very,  very difficult to do

when you go very far out in big-machine physics, although I
think even there one can still inspire a great deal about the

wonder of nature and the -- I'll put it very bluntly:   the

. . .

religious aspects of the scientist's confrontation with nature


42

in his mn investigation.  And I think if we fail to communi-

cate that to the rest of the public, we will all suffer very,

very seriously, because they pf have been facing a vacuum this

last hundred years'that we have filled for ourselvesg but we

have given them very little in exchange for.

    Another level of human systems might be described as
  ecological
the            one,  relationship of man to nature, to land,

to the environment.  And here,  of course,  the dominant theme

to discuss is the progress of agriculture, the domestication

of crops, a more recent innovation since 9,000 years ago, the

mechanization of agriculture, and we have now a community that

doesn't even think about the sources of our food. A very
                                     that

small part of our popuiation is devoted to XHXX ultimate source

of our goods.

And of course, that wonderful impact of science, the

sufficiency of food,  is one of the sources of the population

explosion, and we have here one of the many paradoxes of q+ote-

so-called "progress" w, which is so-called and which, of

course, must be open to question, as any perturbation

large system is likely to result in paradoxes.

I personally do not feel that the environmental problem

is an inherently difficult issue for science and technology

to deal with.  And here I know I'm running very much at odds

with Lewis Mumford and a number of other commentators who feel

-...I

that somehow the pursuit of objective knowledge is intrinsically


43

and fundamentally associated with the destruction of the earth.
I see it as a matter of pure and simple economics.  The commons
                                environment

have been opened for depredation, and the B can be

exploited for private benefit, although it is a public re-

source.  It's not that anyone hasn't noticed it, although a
good deal of it has crept up unawares. We simply haven't

the

created BXX legal forms and established the property rights
to put it under reasonable control,

   I think we are learning to do so, and I think that science
and even technology is going to play a very, very large role
in setting matters again to rights.

    There are those who feel that there is somehow some

fundamental disrespect for nature and for the earth that's
involved in inquiry about nature -- and I merely record the
view, I don't understand it; but I think it's important that

we know that such exist.

   With the development of the industrial revolution, we
have had a new layer of the introduction of scientific techn-

nique, and we have now, with the replacement of muscles by

machines, potential alleviation of toil, just as the develop-
ment of agriculture is the alleviation of hunger; and this,
of
XB course, I guess toil]with hunger) &e generally regarded as
evil, certainly when one is too deeply involved with them, and

so that here is certainly another measure of human progress.

Here I see a problem we will not so readily evade.


It was the only one in this list that  X-ofessor Barber!?) in

,
..v

his book gave very much attention to in his discussion of the

science

impact of EZZW%EB on society.  It's one that has been given
ver-y little attention during the period of environmental hys-

teria, and I think it's going to recur again as a very deep

problem, because it is not just connected with the distribu-

tion of economic goods.  And this is:  how do we deprive a

man of a sense of worth in his work,  if the progress of knowl-
                                           own

edge in his environment exceeds his EKH personal capacity to

adapt to it?

I think it is a matter of biology that our period of

rapid learning reaches its peak at around 16 or 17, and that

at least the second derivative, ir' not the first one, is all

negative after that.  And we have here, then, a very funda-

mental difficulty.  If people have useful lifetimes and useful
                           cycles

work lives that extend far beyond the ZQ%XXX of change that

science and technology can introduce, how in the world am I

going to keep up with the new techniques in molecular biology?

And that is a very deep problem.

    I don't think we're going to get around it very easily.
There are no gimmicks of economic redistribution that are going

to take the place of the sense of worth in a sphere where your

worth is diminishing; and I think tie're going to have to give

very careful thought to the reconstruction of career lines
                                   ,*

and to the whole notion of k-hat are regarded esteemed and
                                    I/b


45

appropriate commitments of people's time and effort at dif-

ferent stages in their career,  if we're to really come to

serious grips with this problem.  I've seen no really serious
suggestions that are, in fact, capable of meeting it, and I'm
                                              than

afraid that we're going to be given leisure rather XXXN useful

work as% a substitute rqith the increased accumulation and

application of scientific knowledge - and I'm not sure it's

a very good bargain.

Another level of organization has to do with the state

and the relationship of the citizen to the state, and here we

have some remarkable paradoxes.  I don't have time to explore

them all, but for some reason people a.re very much concerned

that the police have new tools :Cth which to catch criminals.

The idea that computers might provide more nearly inexorable
                      BXXXRWB breakers

tools to catch speed-limit l$XBWZSs/or income-tax evaders or

to find people who may have run away from the law, and so
                                           Senators
forth,  seems very horrendous,  And one of our m said,

"Humans can forgive, but computers will never forget."

    I find it difficult to believe that we want a social

system where a calculated fraction of lawbreakers will evade

punishment.  If me do, then let's set up a lottery.  (RIPPLE

OF LAWGHTEP)  And if tre don't, I think we need to look at the

side effects of the kind of surveillance that's implied by

the new technologies that are eiqo-tiered in the hands of the

state, or p-fovide whatever other regulations will aeet the


46

big brother watching them; and obviously, &'ilen that kind of

surveillance can be put to illegal uses, we may feel very

helpless and feel that it must be frustrated at its very

source.

I can't help but feel that the question of privacy

vis-8-vis the state is misstated, that the same questions

that would frustrate the establishment of data banks that are

run on computers obviously ought to apply to the existing
bureaucracies

F and the files on paper that occupy much more
                          contain

room and are just as likely to 2ZWXXD3 fallacy or error or

malice,  regardless of the medium on which they happen to be
recorded
3?imsi~B,  And maybe I'm mistaken; maybe political processes

never work well enough to be able to reach such accommodations;
                                     rationalization
that if we had a -- that if we attempted a mere -8

of this question, we would simply end up with an ever-growing
                                             accommoda-

increase in32 state power and could not make the new 2zQZEIGW

tions that encompass the new technologies that would retain

the existing equilibrium.

The evolutionary theory of that relationship would sup-

pose that you will never be able to get by rational design

what you have managed to get by gradual mutual accommodation

and very grave tension between the individual and his society.

This may be true,  but I think the matter does deserve somewhat

more rational examination than it's received in the past -- and


47

I guess I would prefer to see that manifest criminals were

tried, and that if there are injustices in the way that they're
dealt with, that this be faced squarely,  rather than the kind

of evasion that says, " Well, maybe it's just as well if the

police don't always get their man," because the result of that

frustration is, of course, an increasing appeal to extralegal
methods, and in the end it nay well lead to a complete break-

down o f society.
            explored
      I haven't
of          v all of the problems in this or any
?SS the other arenas, but simply touched some of those in which

there are areas of valid contention about the good of knowledge.

The final one is one in which I believe there are the

most ambiguities, although many have no doubts whatsoever,
and this is the role of science and of technology with respect

to the powers of states; that is,  to the role of interstate
conflict
m.  One hears again and again and again that an evi-
dence that physics has outrun our capacity for moral control

has been the development of nuclear weapons.

    Mow we're all afraid of the bombs, and we know all too
                                            . .
well what might happen if they were let loose -- and this is

a subject which certainly deserves at least some ambivalence.

The actual history of the time since World War II has been one

where the great states have been afraid to make war on a large

scale.  The conflicts have spilled out in the most detestable

fashion at all kinds of other levels, but the objective fact


4%

of the situation is that some 25 millions of people were killed

in World War II,  some 15 or 20 millicns of people were killed

in World War I, and all  -- all of    World War I and almost CT:&

of th*6 World War II -- without benefit of nuclear weapons.
       ;'   It's
      XXX33 not plain to me that the good of the world has

been significantly altered by this _mrticular bit of knowledge

or of power, and it is even conceivable that it is beginning

to achieve the aim of showing the utter irrationality of that

kind of conflict,  and the kinds of assertions that were made
                               example
some ten years ago, of which I will give an ZM%F@D and quote,

were not necessarily instances of authentic discourse.

I've made some prognostications about the future, and

i: =:iLll not give them the validity of scientific authenticity.

Lord Snow  -- C. P, Snow -- about eleven years ago, made the

assertion that it was a scientific fact, as sure as anything

that could be demonstrated in the laboratory, that if nuclear

weapons still existed ten years from then, that one of them

surely would have gone off accidentally.  As far as I'm aware,

that has not happened.  That was a prediction that he was en-

titled to offer as a suggestion for your contemplation; it

certainly did not have the rigor of a scientific demonstration.

But then, neither did very much of what I had to say this

evening.

I've presented to you a program for your own contempla-

tion and criticism.  I hope we do not react too defensively,


49

as I sometimes have.  I'm a product of my O-WI culture. Ey

scientific thinking is very much a product of my own social

environment.  But that does not totally prevent me from trying
to bring up a number of issues for more thoughtful examination

and less polemical and angry obfuscation than has been true
                thank
in the past.  And I MQfiwx you very much for your patience.

    (APPLAUSE)

    Mm (ALEc$`:  Doctor Lederberg, the applause is far more
expressive of our deep appreciation for your delivering the

first William S. Paley lecture than any words of mine. I

would like,
    2.;    in concluding, to express my gratitude to Presi-
         ; ,-
         I L
dent ih for allowing us to hold this lecture in Caspary

Auditcrium, not only because of its intimate beeuty, bu-i: bz-

cause Doctor Lederberg's magnificent lecture had indeed ex-

tended beyond the narrow confines of a department of medicine

or single medical center:  it has embraced the concerns of the

entire academic community and society as a whole.

Doctor Lederberg, once again we thank you.  TheW William
Lectures

S, Paley m have tonight been splendidly inaugurated.

    (APPLAUSEJ