A latter-day

rationalist5 lament

S. E. LURIA

Oubliez pour un moment le point que nous occupons dans Pespace
et dans la d&e, et ttendons notre vue SW les sikles (i venir, les
rggions les plus't!loignCes et les peuples ri naitre. Songeons au bien
de notre espke; si nous ne sommes pas assez gh+eux. pardonnons
au moins ci la nature d'avoir CtC plus sage que nous.

DIDEROT, Le Neveu de Rameau

In planning this essay in honor of Andre LwofT, I discarded one after
the other a series of topics that came to my mind: lysogeny, micro-
biology and man, my early and more recent days at the Institut Pasteur.
At the moment, thoughts of Andre Lwoff are associated in my mind
with more urgent concerns about the future of our culture and civili-
zation.

  Perhaps I can explain what I mean by recalling how Lwoff punctu-
ated a classical review on "Lysogeny" (1 ), as well as other writings,
with quotations from Aeschylus, Bacon, Poincare, Nietzsche, and Gide,
among others-quotations sometimes seriously apt, sometimes whimsi-
cal, all revealing a concern for intellectual clarity and an urge to relate
scientific ideas to the whole of a cultural tradition. An&d Lwoff-
scientist, painter, master of language, leader of one of the great schools
of biology-is a prototype scientist-humanist, in whom the "two cul-
tures," supposedly divergent and losing touch of each other, remain


           A LATTER-DAY RATIONALIST'S LAMENT          57
happily married. In a true sense, such a person is the living embodiment
of the cultural tradition of modem man, in which the rationalist-
scientific enterprise of the last three centuries has been grafted on the
vigorous stem of humanistic culture.
  But today that tradition is in crisis. Its value for man and its future
viability are being challenged, especially within those societies that have
felt for the longest time the impact of its consequences. The challenges
are of different but not unrelated kinds. On the one hand, the scientific-
rationalist culture is challenged by those who see it as a sterile, mechani-
cal, value-less pursuit of knowledge, blind to the consequences that this
knowledge may have in store for humanity or, even worse, as a hand-
maiden to technocracy (2). On the other hand, there is the challenge
of those who see the rationalist-scientific culture as a transient phenom-
enon, the product of special local conditions in Western countries in the
last few centuries, and one that has nearly reached saturation, so that
its presumed goals-knowledge and progress-are coming to an asymp
totic end (3).
  Both challenges reflect the tragedy of our times. An enormous
amount of scientific progress has generated stupendous technologies; but
the rationalist hopes of the past two centuries, that a free-wheeling tech-
nology would satisfy the biological needs of man, remove the causes of
conflict among men, and open up a royal way to a golden era of human-
ity, have proved illusory. The brutalities of two world wars at a time
when educated men considered war unthinkable; the rise of aggressive
nationalisms just when the way seemed open to international brother-
hood; the persistence and increase of poverty even in the most affluent
societies; and the current twin threats of nuclear destruction and un-
controlled overpopulation-all these events have shattered confidence
in the values of the rationalist-scientific revolution.
  The whole enterprise is being rejected as responsible for, and inre-
sponsive to, the problems of human lie. Increasingly men, especially
young men, search eagerly for alternative sources of values: either tum-
ing to traditional religion, or sinking into solipsistic despair, or seeking
mystical solutions that substitute immediate experience, individual or
collective, spontaneous or drug-enhanced, for logical analysis. The ulti-
mate aberration-the rejection of sanity itself-is manifested in claims
Of the positive value of psychotic experiences (4) !


58                      s. B. LURIA

  What has gone wrong, and what is to be done? I believe the root
of the problem to be, not in the scientific direction of the cultural enter-
prise, but in its uneven development and in the conditions of the society
in which its products are being applied. Science produces knowledge,
which becomes the source of technology. Technology in turn is being
used for social and political goals. But the society that uses technology
is not a rational society. Its goals are not chosen rationally, in a way
that would bring about the maximum satisfaction of human needs and
desires. Hence most uses of scientific technology fail to benefit mankind.
At best, they satisfy some short-range demand; at worst, they serve the
profit or power motives of ruling groups.
  What is wrong is not a surfeit of science and technology, but their
uses in a society that has not achieved means to choose its own goals
rationally. The need is not for alternatives to science, but for a science
of man and of its society, a science of human technology, and a rational
approach to human values.
  Man is a unique animal. He has a biological nature and also,
uniquely, a cultural nature. The biological nature makes for the tran-
sience of each individual; the cultural nature, based on language, makes
for the persistence of individual contributions. I dare to assert that these
two natures of man contribute to humanity as a whole its only rationally
conceivable "goals" : biological survival and cultural development. The
first is Darwinian, the second Lamarckian. Together, these two imper-
sonal goals confer meaning to the existentially purposeless life of the
individual human beings. Ultimately, these collective goals are the only
rationally acceptable sources of meaningful, evolving values by which
humanity can rule itself at any one point in its development.
  But the two goals do not necessarily function in a cooperative way.
In fact, they are often in conflict. Thus at some times the cultural devel-
opments may pose a threat to man's biological survival; we may be at
such a point now with regard to overpopulation and nuclear energy.
At other times, man's biological needs such as those that generate mass
human migrations may play havoc with some cultures, as took place
in the `dark ages of post-Roman Europe.
  At such times, remedies are needed to restore a balance and en-
hance man's survival and cultural development. But what are those
remedies? Some frightening perspectives have been conceived by literary


          A LATTER-DAY RATIONALIST'S LAMENT          59

imagination: for example, the biologically manipulated, culturally immo-
bilized Brave New World of Aldous Huxley. Hardly less frightening is
the society conceived by Hermann Hesse in Magister Ludi, in which
culture becomes an esthetic cult delegated to a small, uninfluential elite.
  More significant as a remedy, if only a palliative one, is the quest,
forcefully advocated by many in our society, that man's cultural activi-
ties be validated by the criterion of immediate relevance to social prob-
lems. Scientist and humanist are taken to task for their insulation from
the problems of society, for their presumed pursuit of sterile intellectual
exercises, for widening the gap between the amount of knowledge avail-
able and the social environment in which that knowledge is being
applied. There is some validity in this demand for relevance. A wide
gap exists between the cultural enterprises that modem societies en-
courage and finance and the social technologies needed to repair and
prevent the ills that exist within these societies.
  Yet, when the quest for relevance in scientific and cultural activities
takes an anti-intellectual, anti-rationalist turn, its aim is wide of the
true target. It is not culture that has failed society, but society that is
failing culture by applying culture's output to goals that do not make
for man's success, either biological or cultural.
  If the two classes of human goals, biological survival and cultural
development, are to flourish together, not less but more science may be
needed. We need a science of human nature that can provide an under-
standing of the needs, drives, and interactions of men with each other
and with their environment (5). Today, because of misguided priorities,
we may know more about man in interplanetary space than about men
on earth in their own rural or urban dwellings, about their reactions to
close relatives or to alien strangers, to people of similar or different color
or language.
  Also, we need a social science of technology that studies the impact
of new technologies on society and can foresee the probable results and
their social consequences (6).
More than anything, we need a political science that takes into
account the biological and cultural nature of man and devises political
structures that enhance ,the dual goal of humanity rather than the narrow
interests of a class or a nation, or the fostering of some fixed ideology.
Social science has lagged behind natural science, not only because of


60                   S. E; LURIA
the intrinsic di&ulties of the subject, but because of the prejudices
and taboos it has encountered, of the resulting relative lack of encourage-
ment and support, and of having too often let itself be made the faithful
servant of the status quo. Some of the sharpest insights into the possible
methodology of a scientific social science-by Marx and Freud, for ex-
ample-have not yet flourished in the same fashion as the great insights
of natural science because of being or becoming embedded in rigid or
metaphysical frameworks.
How can society develop the kind of social science that can dis-
cover, formulate, and forcefully proclaim sets of values that reflect and
respect the dual goals of humanity at any one stage of its development?
How can we insure that the products of such a social science, when
available, will be implemented in a rational, dynamic, evolutionary way?
And, most important of all, is there time left? The biological crisis of
humanity is drawing near; the cultural crisis may already be at hand,
both results of the uneven development of different branches of human
culture.
  I for one am unwilling to despair, if only because the basis for
hope is deeply embedded in my personal allegiance-as a biologist, to
man's biological survival; as an intellectual, to man's cultural.progress;
as a rationalist, to the rationalistic direction of that progress in the
future. I believe that the outdated frameworks of beliefs and the stultify-
ing power relations of present-day societies can be made to give way
to a more adaptive set of social relations and political institutions.
I believe that if the passion, tbe methodology, and especially the com-
mitment to factual truth and mutual trust characteristic of the natural
sciences can be applied to developing a humanistic social science and
implementing its findings in the social arena, mankind will find a path
in which its dual goals will be pursuable together in harmoniously bal-
anced relation. In that path, the quest and reverence for knowledge, not
only of the physical world, but of man and his unique passage in the
universe, may flourish jointly with the recognition and respect for his
biological nature.


A LATTER-DAY RATIONALIST'S LAMENT

61

NOTES

1. Andre Lwoff, Lysogeny, Bad. Rev. 17, 269-337 (1953).
2. See discussion by T. Rosxak, The Making of a Counter Culture, Doubleday,
New York, 1969.
3. See, for example: G. S. Stem, The Coming of the Golden Age, Natural His-
tory Press, Garden City, New York, 1969.
4. See, for example: The Value of Psychotic Experience, a summer series of
workshops and symposia presented by Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California. See
also R. D. Laing. The Polirics of Experience, Pantheon, New York, 1967.
5. For a penetrating discussion by a biologist, see H. Gaffron, Resistance to
Knowledge, Ann Rev. Plant Physiol., 20: l-40 (1969).
6. See P. Goodman, Can technology be humane? The N.Y. Rev. Books, 13 (No.
9), 27-34 (1969).