(The Challenge and Its Roots)

The subject of this lecture -- the relation between science,

technology, and responsibility -- is very general, but the scope of

my remarks is narrower, and more specific. It is an inquiry into

the reasons why in recent years science and technology, which used

to be the greatest sources of pride and of hope for the future, have

come to be questioned by substantial and vocal groups, especially of

young people.  These critics look with distrust, not only upon specific

applications*of technology, but on the whole enterprise of science --

as the adquisition of objective knowledge and of technology -- as

the power to control the forces of nature.

In the 17th and especially the 18th centuries the idea that all

knowledge would automatically be applied for the good of humanity

seemed to be a truism.  Typically Thomas Jefferson wrote: There is

no truth that I would fear to be known."  In the 19th century,

technology based on the new science suddenly flourished in a, most

vigoPous way, which provided the foundations for modern industry and

led in turn to new scientific progress by a continuous positive

feedback.  The development of the science of electricity and of


electric power, and of chemistry as a source of new materials,

seemed to point unmistakably the way to the future.

Even though the attitude of the untrained public toward science

always had an element of superstitious distrust, the prevalent attitude

toward technology was decidedly optimistic.

  Was this optimism justified?  Was the Zaissez-faire attitude of

the liberal economists, with its implied assumption that developments

in technology would automatically bring prosperity and eliminate war,

poverty and disease, the correct philosophy for society?  Is the 19th

century path a royal way to perfection or is it a blind alley leading

to perdition?  The title I have chosen for to-night's talk --

Slippery when wet -- stands out as a clear warning in the thinking

and writings of thoughtful people throughout society.

  What is new today, especially among the young, is a questioning

not only of the uses of technology but also of the technological

direction in which human society is going, both in capitalist and

socialist countries.  This questioning, irrespective of its reasons

and of its wisdom, serves at least one useful function.  It reminds


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us that, in the shaping of our culture, there is nothing automatic,

nothing dictated either by prime causes or by predetermined final

goals.  Culture is a product of men, a product of the minds and

efforts of men throughout the world and the ages.  Science and

technology are part of a program over which we have control and,

therefore, responsibility.  As expressed by the British biologist,

Peter Medawar, The bells that toll for mankind are attached to our

own neck, and it must be our fault if they do not make a cheerful

and harmonious sound. VI

What has happened to cause a change in the attitude of many people

toward science and technology?  A critical process, I believe, has

been the shattering in this century of past illusions about the

course of human progress.  The first world war destroyed the illusion

of an earlier generation -- the generation of my father -- that war,

at least between developed nations, would disappear and that conflicts

would be resolved peacefully by rational agreements.  This illusion,

of course, ignored the enormous injustices between rich and poor

nations and the exploitation of the latter by the former.  But the


first world war came as a rude awakening.

Then, just as the world was beginning to recapture the illusion

of a smooth future of progress, came another shattering experience.

In one of the most "advanced, " "civilized" nations of Europe there

arose a political monster -- a regime based on the open denial of

the ideal of human brotherhood, on the celebration of race and the

state and of force, and on the application of the fruits of human

ingenuity to the corruption of the human spirit.  This shock was

even more damaging to the vision of a smooth automatic progress.

For, if the realization that human institutions can go wrong is painful,

the idea that human institutions can be set up in order to do wrong

is intolerable.

Then, with the second world war another fateful development took

place: the acceptance of mass slaughter, of the bombing of civilian

populations, first in Holland and England, then in Germany .and Japan,

culminating in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The

atom bomb brought home to every citizen of the world the fact that

a great discovery of science had been applied directly to mass


5

destruction even before its possibilities for constructive uses had

been explored.  And, even more disconcerting, the peace of the world

has since then been based, not on mutual understanding, but on the

balance of nuclear terror, on the realization that several governments,

at enormous expense of scientific and technological resources, have

equipped themselves with the capability of annihilating each other's

nations -- and possibly even mankind altogether.

  This brings me to another reason for the widespread questioning

of the role of science and tecynology in society: the magnitude of

the changes that science-based technology can bring about.  The per-

turbations produced by technology are reaching a magnitude of the

same order as the intrinsic parameters of the natural and social

phenomena which they affect.  Today's weapons can destroy a substantial

portion of humanity.  But this is only one example. Take agriculture

and public health science.  We know that the technology based on these

sciences was increasing the production of food, improving sanitation,

removing many of the traditional evils of mankind -- starvation,

filth, epidemics -- and increasing life expectancy by decades.


6

But we were not sufficiently aware that the same technology that made

our lives longer and richer and healthier was bringing about the

threat of overpopulation, which may well become the number one problem

facing humanity. Likewise, in our technological optimism we closed

our eyes to the fact that uncontrolled use of natural resources by

the industrially developed nations can bring about the exhaustion

of critical raw materials, deplete world reserves, alter the environ-

ment, and make it even harder for other nations to approach a

comparable standard of productivity.

But there is another reason that makes people uneasy about the

wisdom of the technological path.  Modern technology, while contri-

buting unquestionable benefits to large parts of humanity, has

brought about the need for ever larger, more elaborate, more impersonal

institutions in order to run the technological machinery.  The modern

corporation, the modern state, whether socialist or capitalist, are

complex machines directed to managing at some efficient level a

technology that has become indispensable to the functioning of modern

society.  These institutions become increasingly depersonalized. The


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human element seems to disappear.  The average individual feels

that he has less and less understanding and less control over the

forces that mold the world in which he lives. Puzzlement becomes

becomes discouragement and then alienation. And with alienation

comes the questioning, not only of the social structure, but also

of its technological foundations and, finally, of the scientific

enterprise itself.

We fear that society may become committed, irreversibly and

automatically, to a purely technological future.  We question, not

only the possible misuses of technology, from atom bombs to

thoughtless pollution to the wasteful depletion of rare resources,

but the very invasiveness of technological thinking, the neglect

of alternative values, even the labeling of such alternative values

as reactionary.  The slope of our commitment to an overpowering

technology is steeper and steeper.  Down the slippery slope we

proceed with increasing misgivings.  Will the joy ride prove to be

a descent into the abyss?  Do we need a warning -- slippery when wet?

To illustrate concretely the change in attitude toward science


8

and its products I can think of no better examples than some from

my own science, molecular biology.  This is a very esoteric field,

the study of the molecular basis of cellular functions such as the

replication and the function of genes, the synthesis of proteins,

the assembly of cellular membranes.  We have witnessed very great

progress in understanding the basic phenomena of life, the chemistry

of DNA, the regulation of gene function, the mechanisms of enzyme

activity.  As yet there have been no practical applications of the

newest knowledge; it has been as "pure" a science as some branches

of mathematics.  It has in fact been challenged from some quarters

for its lack of relevance, that is, for its lack of explicit practical

purpose.  Now we begin to see the possibility of practical applica-

tions in a not too distant future.  We have learned how to isolate

certain bacterial genes in pure form, to transfer them from cell to

cell, and even to synthesize some genes chemically. We have learned

that some viruses can act, both in bacteria and in animals, as

vehicles for transferring genes from cell to cell.  Chromosomes or

fragments of chromosomes can be introduced into living cells by


9

cell fusion in the test tube.  As a result of these discoveries, the

remote but distinct possibility exists that similar genetic inter-

vention can ultimately be carried out in man, treating genetic

diseases by correcting the genetic defects rather than only by

remedying their consequences.

There exists even the distant possibility, by a combination of

genetic and embryological techniques, of altering the genetic material

at the hereditary level by affecting the germ cells themselves.

Embryology is advancing very rapidly.  It is already possible to

diagnose some genetic diseases of the unborn child by examination of

the amniotic fluid,  It is equally possible to diagnose the sex of

the unborn.  Workers in Great Britain and in the United States have

succeeded in fertilizing in the test tube human eggs with human

sperm and in inducing the development of the fertilized eggs to the

stage when they are ready for implantation in the womb.  This line

of research may ultimately provide a b.ypass for certain types of

infertility and may make it possible to introduce into the fertilized

egg specific genes or chromosomes.  It may even make it possible to


10

reproduce human beings clonally, by nuclear transplantation into

enucleated eggs which would then be reimplanted into foster mothers'

wombs.  This description of a genetic engineering still to come may

sound like science finction; but science fiction has the disturbing

habit of becoming reality much sooner than we expect.

Only a few years ago, the prospect of such future powers to

correct the genetic constitution and even.the hereditary material of

human beings would have been welcomed as a promise of medical progress

and of self-directed human betterment.  Ant yet these very prospects

have caused some people, including thoughtful ones, to raise warnings

of potential misapplications.  The concern is not only with the

ethical problems raised by the possibility of manipulating human

germ plasm or of selecting the sex of one's children. What is being

feared is the purposeful creation of genetic weapons or the use of

genetic techniques like nuclear transplantation to create races of

enslaved morons or of ruling supermen.  And when we object that these

are morbid fantasies we may receive the reply that the idea of an

"ultimate solution" of the Jewish problem also sounds like a morbid


11

fantasy, and not like the tragic reality that it was in Germany

only 30 years ago.

A more subtle fear is that manipulation of human heredity for

experimental purposes may weaken the respect for human personality

by making it acceptable to use men as means rather than as ends --

in violation of the Kantian imperative.

I have used the example of modern biology to show how the critics

of science have come to see science and technology, not as cultural

advances and promises of new gifts, but as sources of new dangers.

Other examples might be given from chemistry, physics, or computer

science.  Men are faced with what often looks to them like a blind

course of technological developments.  In the words of one of the

great priests of that supposedly fatal process, John van Neumann:

"In the field of science and technology, what can be done will be

done. I1 Is this really so?  Is it wise to couple science and

technology in this assertion?  Science will discover what is there

to be discovered.  But is it necessary that every possible technology

be developed?  And, once developed, must it be used, irrespective


12

of consequences?  Man revolts against the prospect of such automation.

He claims for himself the responsibility to fashion his own destiny.

He wants to heed the warning and, even if the way of technology is in

fact the road of the future, he wants to follow it at his own pace

with his eyes open, not sliding blindly down the slippery slope,  But,

unfortunately, in rejecting what they see asi the automatic path of

technological development, people often go too far: they reject all

of technology and science itself as if they were the causes of the ills

of society.  But this is a serious fallacy.  It is not the technique

that generates the evils, but the way in which it is used. The problem

is the uneven development of man's culture, of scientific and tech-

nical knowledge on the one hand and social institutions on the other

hand.  Thus technologies become available to societies that are not

institutionally prepared to make wise use of them and they can become

instruments to foster outdated or inhuman ideologies or tools in the

hands of a soulless techndcracy.  The problem is not scientific or

technical: it is social and political.  What must be questioned is

the uses society makes of the products of science the the extent to


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with it commits itself to the technological imperative as a substi-

tute for the Kantian imperative.  Yet the rejection of science and

technology as legitimate enterprises of our culture has become wide-

spread.  This rejection has been expressed in provocative books such

as The Making of a Counterculture, I1 by Theodore Roszak and "The Green-

ing of America" by Charles Reich.  These writers have challenged the

validity of objective consciousness, that is, of the scientific method

based on measurement and on verifiability. They proclaim instead the

superior validity of subjective consciousness, as an assertion of a

renewed sense of the value of the individual.

  In my opinion, there are grave dangers in this attitude, which

opens another slippery and treacherous slope.  In exalting subjective

consciousness and deprecating science and objectivity it falls into the

same kind of automatic thinking that it attributes to the way of

technology.  It fosters the felief that, if only men as individuals

would break away from the constraintes of the complex society, that

society would automatically be reformed or vanish away.  This is a

dangerous belief which ignores the collective responsibility of


14

mankind to mold its own future.  If society needs to be reformed,

it is not going to be reformed by walking out on it.  There is also

a callous elitist aspect in the anti-scientific position.  Rejecting

technology implies rejecting the aspirations of the masses of humanity

in the developing parts of the world, for whom properly used stiientific

technology represents the only hope for economic and social progress.

Finally, the antiscientific attitude is dangerous because it tends

to become a denial of rationality itself.  And if a society were to

abandon reason as a guide to its policies, the result is likely to be,

not the utopia of the worshippers of subjective consciousness, but

the nightmare of a new irrational technocracy like that of Nazism.

This is the dilemma.  On the one hand, we cannot reject scientific

technology as a reality of life.  On the other hand, we know that

technology, while a source of great benefits, can be misused by

society.  And we see the danger that the machinery developed to

operate modern technology may generate a powerful technocracy

insensitive to human aspirations.


15

  What is the way out?  We must avoid both the slippery path of

overcommitment to technological imperative and the equally slippery

path of anti-rationalism.  We must find means to use the power that

science and technology put at our disposal in a rational way, for

goals of human satisfaction freely chosen by an informed population.

This will not be easy, because many of our institutions and ways of

thinking -- nationalism and racism and rligious prejudice and the

belief in war as an instrument of policy -- are remnants of a past

that has been made obsolete by technology.  We must find ways to

decide wisely on how technologies are to be used -- what, when, and

in whose interest.  We must learn to face the future with what I

might call a tenstHy balanced set of mutally restraining values,

coupling the powers, of technology to the strength of a wise humanism.

The responsibility for creating the future society rests with

all mankind.  But I believe that as scientists we have certain

special responsibilities, because our work (even that of a molecular

biologist like myself) is the source of the technology that society

must decide whether to develop and how to use.


16

  In the first place, it is important for us scientists to realize

that science can never be neutral in a world that uses the products

of science and that there is no value-free science, just as there

is no value-free literature or value-free art.  Science's purity is

in the search of new knowledge to be added to the intellectual

patrimony of mankind.  But the acquisition of new knowledge does not

necessarily absolve the scientist from asking how this new knowledge

can or will be utilized.  The illusion of purity and neutrality is

again a dangerous path -- slippery when wet.  It may obscure or even
                                      --

justify all sorts of compromises.  It may make it easier for the

least pure among the practitioners of science to cover their

activities under a mantle of innocence.  Yet the situation in the

area of applied research is rarely ambiguous,  When it comes to

research on new weapons of mass slaughter few people will maintain

that the scientists do not bear responsibility for the consequences

of their work.

But even when applied research is not directly involved, a

scientist may often have to make ethical choices in his relation


17

with the centers of power, the places where decisions are made con-

cerning the development and uses of technology.  He may have to

choose between the attractiveness of power, the chance of influencing

important decisions, the opportunity to further the applications of

his own discoveries, and the risk of becoming a war asset or a partner

in a technocratic machine.  Is the morality of science compatible

with the morality of power?  For example, is the practice of science

compatible with the commitment to secrecy or at least to silence?

Sometimes scientists operating within the circles of power justify

their activities by the belief that they can influence decisions into

saner directions.  But this belief is an illusion -- witness the failure

of the Los Alamos scientists to prevent the atomic bombing of Japan

in 1945 or the earlier failure of the British scientists to stop the

futile saturation bombings of Germany -- two instances of insane

warfare against masses of civilians.  A scientist who associates

his work closely with the centers of power is more likely to find

himself a tool than a leader.

Within his laboratory a scientist has the choice of problems to


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investigate,  at least to the extent that he can obtain financial

support.  Here the questions become more subtle. To which extent

are scientists responsible for the distant applications of their

work, for making available to society a power that society may misuse?

Should a scientist try to foresee the possible applications of his

work in deciding what research he will pursue?  Should he try to

concentrate on problems relevant to the immediate needs of mankind

or should he freely pursue the acquisition of new knowledge?  Should

he choose not to work on problems whose solution may generate

techniques which society has not yet learned to control?

  Let me take an example from recent controversy. A number of

studies have raised the question of the existence of several points

difference in the average IQ of black vs. white Americans. Part

of the controversy has to do with technical questions of significance

of the data.  But there is a more fundamental issue to be raised:

should such research be done at all? Some prominent scholars have

asserted both in scholarly and popular articles the need to find

out, either in order to devise educational reforms or in the name of


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"the right to know," that is,  in the interest of true science.

Inquiry should not be shut off, these scientists believe, nor should

society be left in ignorance.  But nobody seems to have been concerned

that in our society the very doing of this research and publishing

its results, whatever they are, constitutes mischief.  What must be

balanced in this case is the right to know vs. the right to do mischief.

I for one see no difficulty in choosing, especially when the "knowledge"

to be obtained is of no use at all except to the researcher's career.

In other words, I believe that not all research is legitimate:

its legitimacy has to be judged in terms of its predictable consequences.

When it comes to working with human beings, there are curiosities that

are not legitimate because they hurt.  Medical research has long

recognized this principle and social science needs to recognize it

as well.

Leaving aside the controversial areas, there is one important

function that scientists must strive to fulfill individually and

collectively, and that is to try to educate the public in the facts

of science, explaining new developments and their technological


20

consequences, so that the public may have better grounds for reaching

policy decisions.

If in a well-ordered society decisions are to be made by the

consensus of an informed public opinion, then it is the responsibility

of those who know the facts to make them known and explain them.   Too

many of us live in ivory towers, publishing scholarly papers, but

neglecting to make contact with the outside world or to understand

the workings of the society that makes use of our scientific production.

The disaffection and even the hostility of the general public

toward science is based in great part on ignorance and misunderstanding,

not only of-the relations between scientists, technologists, managers,

and politicians in society, but also of the facts of science and,

even more important, of the nature of science and of scientific

discovery.  The large number of American citizens, even educated

ones, who believe in the reality of astrology, levitation, or extra-

sensory perception is a testimony, not to credulity, but to a

lack of a basic grasp of the nature of science, of the concepts of

proof and verifiability.  Even more relevant is the scientific


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ignorance of supposedly responsible political leaders.  Thus British

Prime Minister Clement Attlee was quoted as knowing nothing of the

genetic effects of radiation when he concurred in President Truman's

decision to drop the atom bomb -- and I would be surprised if Truman

knew any better!

  What educated citizens should have -- and, therefore, should get

in school and in the mass media -- is not so much a superficial

knowledge of some physics, chemistry, geology, and/or biology as an

appreciation of the method of science and of the mutual interactions

between science, technology, and politics.  Besides helping them

make informed decisions, such an appreciation would help dispel

irrational attitudes of impotent fear, or despair, or mystical worship

toward science and technology.  It would also counteract the rise

of technocratic elites which, having (or being reputed to have)

exclusive possession of the technical knowledge, tend to monopolize

the direction of societal affairs.

  Finally, there is another task that concerned scientists can

undertake, but rarely do.  This task is to be actively involved, as


22

citizens but also as scientists, in the affairs of the society which

thekr work will ultimately change and even transform.  This involve-

ment, in my opinion, ought not to be limited to acting as expert

consultants to government and industries.  It may take the form of

participation as individuals -- not institutionally -- at the political

lavel where the basic decisions are or should be made. A democratic

society could well use more scientists actively involved in politics,

participating in the decision-making process not behind the scenes

but in the heat of the political struggle. There have been some

important illustrations of this.  After the last world war, scientists

led the political struggle that achieved civilian rather than military

control of atomic energy in the United States.  More recently,

scientists openly entered the political dbate on the deployment of

anti-ballistic missiles,  In such ways scientists help society

evolve in a direction that permits a wiser utilization of the fruits

of science for man's benefit.

Even in areas less directly influenced by science, we scientists

can be valuable participants in the political process for a number

of reasons: because we are trained in the precision of measurement


23

and critical evaluation of data, and also because our work fosters

the habit of intellectual integrity and collaborative activity in

order to produce universally usable scientific knowledge.

  In concluding, let me return to a very difficult question, that

of pure versus goal-directed research.  Should a scientist, in

choosing the subject of his investigations, consider primarily the

advancement of knowledge or does he have the obligation to ask himself

whether his work is relevant to the immediate needs of society?

There has been a rising demand for relevance in the work of scientists --

a demand that those with scientific skills devote themseves directly

to eliminating urgent ills such as poverty, disease, and pollution

of the environment,

These urgent tasks are very real, and many scientists in the

applied areas are devoting their work to them.  But not all science

is applied science.  We must be careful not to respond to the call

for relevance either by apologizing for pure science or, worse, by

camouflaging it as goal-directed science.  All knowledge may find

applications; but the pursuit of knowledge does not need such justification.


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  The sciences are not only or even primarily the handmaidens of

technology.  Like philosophy and the arts, they are integral and      I

essential components of the intellectual enterprise of mankind.

They are part of what makes man human, the source of knowledge of

himself and of the world around him.  Society may at some times

support one or another branch of science for the practical benefit

6hat it expects of it.  Or it may even,  as has been the case in

recent decades in the United States, support the whole enterprise

of science on the assumption that by-and-large the results shall be

beneficial.  And then, at other times, this support may be questioned

for the various reasons I have discussed. But, as long as there

will be young people who wonder why plants flower in spring, how an

egg gives rise to a bird, why a;)radioactive nucleus emits beta

rays -- or how all these things came to be in the first place, or

where it will end -- science will continue to advance, supported or

not.

  It may be, however,  that a sound foundation to the continuous

advance of science may require from scientists a new and heightened


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sensitivity to the aspirations of humanity in its struggle toward

a better life.  It may require the exercise of an active sense of

responsibility for involvement into the social aspects of science.

This may be the best way for us scientists to legitimize the pursuit

of our chosen enterprise.