BEFORE THE CHEMIST STEPS OUT Ε. Τ. POWERS, Morsasito Chemical C o . , St Louis, M o .
Our author analyzes the scientists and outlines some principles the chemist should keep in mind in s t e p p i n g out of the laboratory to take a more prominent place in public and s o c i a l affaire. IN his Perkin Medal address Jan. 7, 1944, Gaston DuBois presented a very con vincing argument in favor of the chemist's stepping out of the laboratory in order to make himself more familiar with some of the other aspects of life, and thereby con tribute to the betterr nt of society as a whole. James Bryant Conant also re flected this point of view when in his Priestley Medal speech he said, "We know that the national welfare depends on science, and likewise, the future of science depends on the national welfare." Elabo rating on this theme he went on to encour age cooperation and understanding be tween scientists and nonscientists. This principle is, of course, a worthy ideal but before we send the chemist, or engineer, or scientist out from the relative quiet of his ivory-tower laboratory into the hectic maelstrom that is life, we should in all fair ness ask and seek answers to the following double question: Is the average scientist in his present condition, by virtue of his experience and education, capable of mak ing lasting contributions in the fields of the social sciences and human relations, and, if not, what are the attributes with which he must be furnished in order to enable him to make lasting contributions? In the opening lines of his famous dra matic poem, Goethe tells us that the medieval alchemist, Faust, possessed knowledge of philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine, and a myriad of other subjects before he dared to venture forth from the microcosm, his laboratory, into the macro cosm, world-existence. Yet in spite of this formidable array of learning, his career must be reckoned a failure until, in the closing moments of his life, he discovered the secret of cooperation with his fellow man. How much more beneficial his life might have been had he learned this com paratively simple principle early in his career, even at the cost of neglecting some of the more esoteric paths of learning. However, here was a man and scientist, far above the ordinary, often referred to as the precursor of Nietsche's Superman, well versed in library and laboratory knowl edge, who was still unable to apply his learning in a useful manner and serve his fellow man thereby, in the light of this, it seems quite possible that our ordinary scientist, a lesser man than Faust, might find overwhelming difficulties in his way as he turns his back upon his laboratory door. Assuming the hypothesis t o be true, that
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it is beneficial to all for the scientist to leave his laboratory, it must be decided how this can be accomplished in a manner which will enable the venturing technolo gist to make the transition successfully and employ his talent for the betterment of mankind a s a whole. The present paper will attempt to use as starting material the average scientist of today, either industrial or academic, a n d prescribe for him the proper preparations for his departure from the cloister. N o attempt will be made t o determine the m o s t beneficial educational requirements for the embryo scientist, or to lay out a college curriculum for him, as this is a large problem i n itself. Still, many of the principles included in this analysis can be applied t o the other problem. Analyzing the Scientist First of all, what is our scientist like? Many fine and glowing eulogies have been written in his behalf. He has been called the pioneer of modern civilization. Motion pictures have glorified individuals such as Louis Pasteur. Sensitive and artistic biographies have been written such as Muriel Rukeyser's recent study of Willard Gibbs. However, that is only one half of the story; advorse criticism has not been lacking and this, destructive though it may be, will probably serve as a better starting point for a n analysis inasmuch as it points out specific faults, and the correction of faults is the ultimate aim of this study. Thorstein Veblen, one of the more bitter critics of our entire social scheme, in "The Engineers and the Price System" paints the following picture: "By settled habit the technicians, the engineers and indus trial experts are a harmless and docile sort, well fed on the whole, and somewhat placidly content with the full dinner pail." The brilliant Spanish social analyst, Ortega y Gasset, in "The Revolt of the Masses" devotes a considerable amount of space t o the consideration of the impact of science upon modern life and, as one of his fundamental tenets, h e holds that liberal democracy based upon technical knowl edge is the highest form of life. However, when he discusses the scientists, as a class and individually, he is far from complimen tary. His views may be summarized as follows: Science demands specialization for progress, and the scientist through overspecialization loses contact with the greater issue, civilization, and tends to sneer at it, dismissing it as a subject for
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dilettantes' discussions. Earlier historical types could usually be classified as either learned or ignorant, but the scientific spe cialist in a restricted field is neither fish nor fowl. He is a learned ignoramus, usually reacting as a mass-man in fields other than his own. These, then, are Ortega's views and he concludes by classifying the scien tist as one of the more obnoxious of his socalled "partially-qualified men". These opinions are admittedly harsh, but, on sifting them, one finds a certain element of truth in the accusations. T h e world is becoming overspecialized and even in endeavoring to keep abreast of one small section of the field of science one can easily become snowed under by the number of publications and papers which are being produced. These futile efforts may result in one's losing contact with many of the other aspects of life which, in the long run, are important to the development of a well-rounded personality. In general, the scientist is concerned with the behavior of things rather than people and, in this, may be termed an escapist; for things, machinery, and chemical compounds do seem to follow cer tain clear, fundamental laws which can be grasped after the expenditure of some men tal effort, while the laws (if there are any) governing the conduct of persons are at best quite nebulous and unformulated. Therefore, the scientist may be said t o have chosen the easier path. Dr. Conant is in agreement with this when he says, "As a mere challenge to rational man, any branch of accumulative knowledge must yield t h e palm t o all phases of philosophy." With this criticism in mind let us pro ceed t o the problem at hand: that of re modeling the scientist so that he may emerge from the chrysalis stage as a wellrounded individual to take his place in the macrocosm, and utilizing those excellent characteristics which he has acquired as a result of his training and which will prove of service to the world at large. Unfortunately the tendency for things to obey laws and for people to ignore them engenders in the scientist a certain amount of intolerance and impatience when dealing with the latter. His education has been based upon an absolutely rigid, unyielding devotion to truth and crystal-clear thought. Any deviation from absolute truth or any seemingly muddy thinking by a person educated along different lines will usually inspire in the scientist a feeling of superior ity and contempt which he often, unfortu nately, makes no effort to conceal. Tech nologists are usually scathing in their opin ions of salesmen and lawyers, and often
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accuse them of intellectual dishonesty. Lack of tact is a fault common t o many scientists and a fault in which he takes pride, frequently ascribing it to bluntness and love of truth. This can be seen to originate in his inability to differentiate between things and people. If a machine fails to react in the expected manner, the trouble can usually be diagnosed and the machine put to rights. However, if the same thing occurs in a person it may arise from a myriad of intangibles and may be impossible to diagnose, especially by an outspoken fundamentalist who, by blunt criticism, may aggravate the difficulty and alienate the person concerned. The good salesman, usually a conscious diplomat and unconscious psychologist, is used to dealing with people and possesses a more adjustable personality. In a case like that mentioned above he would usually succeed in putting both himself and the person in question in a pleasant frame of mind. Whether this constitutes intellectual dishonesty or not is a purely academic question. The important point is that the salesman would make both himself and the other person happier, while the blunt scientist might achieve opposite results. Men vs. Machines One of the most unfortunate manifestations of this inability to differentiate between men and machines comes in the field of labor relations. Many an engineer with excellent technical qualifications fails to derive the optimum performance from his plant or production unit because of ignorance of human relations. Peter Drucker points this out when in "The Future of Industrial Man" he says, "In mass production technology the worker is only one sloppily designed machine." H e later points out that the situation cannot be remedied until status and function are restored to the worker and this cannot be done until he is regarded as a man. Therefore, the first attribute which the chemist leaving his laboratory must possess is tact and good manners. I t might be a good idea if every scientific library, in addition to the usual collection of "handbooks", included a copy of Emily Post's Etiquette. Next, the scientist before closing his laboratory door behind him should make an earnest effort to broaden his cultural background. T o o often he remains a man of narrow interests whose favorite amusement consists of "talking shop" with other similarly constructed men. Unfortunately this is often directly traceable to the overspecialized formula for scientific education which has been prevalent in most of our universities for the last twenty or thirty years and which has often resulted in producing technically trained graduates of a trade-school rather than a university caliber. However, as stated before, the optimum prescription for education will not be discussed here. Taking the scientist as he is, how can he broaden himself? V O L U M E
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H e should proceed along two lines: One, the factual, and two, the esthetic. These will b e considered in order. T h e newspapers and radio constitute a sugar-coated method of attaining at least a conversational knowledge of world affairs even if used only very moderately. Weekly news digests may serve the same purpose. In all these sources of information one must he careful to distinguish between fact and opinion, to try to determine what actually happened and what the author would like you to believe happened. Commentators, editorialists, and magazine editors are men and, as such, are subject to all t h e human weaknesses such as bias and prejudice. The writer with an "axe to grind" may either consciously or unconsciously interpret facts in a manner aimed at furthering his cause and the discriminating reader must be able to detect this bias. Unfortunately there is no easy short-cut which can be taken in order to attain the required sense of objectivity. This will come only after a fairly broad background has been constructed. The construction of the necessary background involves primarily a knowledge of history, political, economic, and cultural. Although a busy scientist may not have time enough to become acquainted with the wars of the Greek city-states or the intricate diplomacy carried on between medieval Popes and Emperors, he should at least familiarize himself thoroughly with the history of his own country. Good Citizenship This is a very important point which cannot be stressed too strongly. The scientist should not leave his laboratory until he is capable of performing as a good and useful citizen by being able to differentiate letween fact and fiction and by being able to judge important modern events in the light of his country's national development. Just as a good chemist will consult the literature before undertaking the synthesis of some compound, so should a good citizen consult the records of the past before venturing to vote or pass opinion on some issue which may vitally concern his country's, future. The knowledge of American history is essential t o good citizenship which is, of course, one of the most fundamental criteria in deciding whether a person is contributing to society or not. In addition to this historical or factual deficit, most scientists suffer even more acutely from another cultural deficit which, to their practical minds, may not on the surface seem so important but which is absolutely essential t o the development of a well-rounded personality: that is the esthietic deficit. T o accuse the scientist of an absolute lack of appreciation for beauty would be unfair, for there is beauty in the logical deduction of structural formulas and the remarkable syntheses of complex compounds as exemplified by the work of Emil Fischer; there is beauty in the com-
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prehensive mathematical reconciliation of a mass of seemingly unrelated facts carried out by physicists such as Planck and Einstein; there is beauty in the daring design of enormous life-saving synthetic rubber and 100-octane gasoline plants performed by cool-headed engineers working smoothly under pressure. Most scientists are aware of these beauties in their profession. However, this type of beauty is by nature rather cold and intellectual and represents only one half of the picture. What our scientists too often do lack is an appreciation of that form of beauty which is primarily emotional and which can be attained most generally by a familiarity with the arts; with philosophy, literature, painting, and music. Here again this deficit can usually be attributed, in its origins, to faults in the educational pattern which made it imperative that a scientist, during his formative years, devote most of his time to the study of factual subjects with consequent neglect of esthetic matters. There has been a strong trend in recent years especially in the works of Eddington and Jeans to attempt a reconciliation between the findings of modern physics and the major philosophical arguments of past and present. These writings might well serve as stepping stones for our scientist as he enters the esthetic world. Too often the busy worker in either laboratory or industrial plant tends t o routinize his work and uses his scientific background merely as an empirical tool t o aid in the solution of problems at hand, failing entirely to grasp the broader implications of science and its effect upon civilization as a whole. When these broad implications have been realized, when the gap between science and philosophy has been bridged, then the thinking scientist can no longer be unaware of the necessity for developing an interest in the so-called cultural or esthetic subjects. T o a man used to dealing with chemical symbols or mathematical equations, the first reactions towards a Keats sonnet or a Bach fugue may not be overly stimulating.. However, this is to be expected as it represents an entrance into what is virtually a new world, the full consequences of which cannot hope to be grasped at first glance. Just as the many aspects of Clausius' exposition of the Second Law of Thermodynamics cannot be comprehended a t a single reading, neither can the many beauties of a great work of art be realized by a hasty perusal. Both science and art require effort and an attempt at a sympathetic understanding and in both cases this understanding can best be furthered by exposure. Today, exposure t o the arts should present no problem. Every city of size is equipped with library and book stores; radios, phonographs, and recordings are available at rather low costs; larger centers have their symphony orchestras, their theaters, and universities where extension courses can be had. In fact, one 891
almost has to lead a rather hermetical existence t o avoid the impact of the arts upon life. However, this is exactly what too many scientists are doing. Of any group of professional people, scientists and engineers seem to be the most limited in intellectual accomplishments outside of their given field. An explanation for this limited outlook o n the part of scientists, at least young industrial scientists, is unfortunately probably occasioned by that good old-fashioned American virtue, the desire to get ahead. The young chemist or engineer, long used to dealing with facts and figures, feels as though he were dissipating his time away when he "wastes" it on poetry or music; he believes he could spend i t much more profitably in the study of science. His materialistic training is so effective that it becomes part of his personality and forces him to spend even his leisure time materialistically, either in scientific study or in cultivating some handicraft hobby. What the young scientist must not overlook is the fact that almost all men who have risen to the top in industrial or academic positions today are men of broad interests. Most of the great scientists of the past such as Lavoisier, Pascal, or Leibniz were men whose activities e m braced many fields. In fact, one of the primary requisites for an executive position is the ability to see the over-all picture and this quality is, by definition, lacking in a "one-track mind". An executive today must be able to evaluate the effect of politics, national and international, upon business, must be capable of interpreting economic changes, should b e capable of meeting people from all ranks and nations and conversing with them upon a myriad of subjects. As an antidote for this essentially practical life and to keep his mind froin going stale, such a man will seek relaxation in the arts. One of the most important assets in making one's life happy and meaningful is the development of a sense of b e a u t y — that is, the ability to recognize beauty when it is before one and the ability t o derive pleasure and knowledge therefrom. This principle applies to chemist as well a s poet. If both can find beauty in a large number of things, their lives will become more vital to themselves and more meaningful to others. As an example of a scientist, who, in addition t o being able to grasp the over-all picture, also possessed a keen sense of beauty, let us consider a man whose numerous inventions included a plough, a sundial, an adjustable bookcase, a portable writing desk, a phaeton, a swivel chair, a folding ladder, a lantern, a dumbwaiter, and a weather vane. This is Thomas Jefferson, whom Van Wyck Brooks writes of as follows: "Scarcely leaving his native province he had become a great humanist there and one of the most cultivated men the world could 892
boast of—and all this thanks to the kind of advantage that he shared with thousands of other young men and that any Virginian of means might have had as well. H e had read Homer as a boy on canal trips down the Rivanna, while he pored over Virgil stretched under an oak tree, and although he never went far with German, he knew Italian, Spanish, and French, and Anglo-Saxon well enough t o teach it in later years. Still as a boy at the College of William and Mary, he had mastered Newtonian physics and calculus too, while music was the 'favorite passion' of his soul, and for a dozen years instructed by an Italian musician he played on his violin three hours a day. Had he not won his wife indeed by his talent with the violin and his art of singing duets, in the face of two rivals? He had developed early the eager curiosity that marked him as an architect, an inventor, and a linguist, for he was also more or less familiar with the languages of fortyIndian tribes. He even attempted t o learn Gaelic At home still young he had planned Monticello, which became perhaps the most beautiful dwelling in the country, and he was a master gardener and designer of gardens as well as the boldest of riders and best of shots." Therefore, let the scientist not leave his laboratory until his mind has become trained to see the over-all picture, t o visualize things in their proper perspective and not as single objects flashed upon a screen. As mental training for this objective, as well as developing a wide sense of beauty, the cultivation of the arts cannot be too highly recommended. Taking Off the Mask of Mystery Another item which the scientist should attend to before leaving his laboratory is t o tell the public what actually takes place in the laboratory, to publicize his work. Of all the occupations open to man, that of chemist or scientist is probably the least understood b y the general public. Hollywood pictures him as the intuitive man of genius clad in a white cloak, slightly mad, but on the whole necessary to civilization. The labor unions consider him merely as another routine industrial worker who happens to deal with test tubes rather than bolts or nuts. And so on, there m a y be a variety of pictures but none of them are accurate. Some attempt should be made to give the public a warm and personal picture of the enormous amount of technical work which lies behind every advance, of civilization. Some attempt should be made t o present a sympathetic picture of the scientist, to show how by dint of his education, experience, and plain "stickto-it-iveness , , he is able to lay the foundation for things to come. Some attempt should be made to show how the "scientific teams" eulogized by Bradley Dewey function. In general, a serious attempt should be made to tear off the false mask C H E M I C A L
of mystery and present the scientist to the public a s a professional man of high standing, a s a man worthy to take his stand along with doctors, lawyers, and educators b y virtue of his educational background and, even more important, by virtue of his contributions to society. W h y has this not been done before and bow is it to be realized now? Up to a few years ago there was no need for it. The scientists of America were comparatively sparse, and industry had not yet realized the benefits of large research staffs of technical helpers. However, today we have virtually a class of scientists and, if the prewar trend is continued, in the postwar years probably more young men than ever before will choose this field for their endeavors i n later life. T h e only means of presenting a true picture of these thousands of men t o the American public is through intelligent publicity. It is true that there has been much scientific publicity in t h e past, such as the advertisements and releases of large industrial firms. However, as these are intended to serve as a m e a n s for selling products, the emphasis has been on products rather than the people behind the products. Therefore, it is recommended that the larger scientific groups, such as the AMERICAN
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strenuous efforts to increase the favorable publicity devoted to their professions. T h e aim o f this publicity should be to present the American scientist to the general public a s a good citizen, an educated professional man, and a credit to society. I n addition, an active publicity committee should be appointed whose purpose should be to prepare and present articles in magazines and newspapers accentuating the personal element in the contributions of science to civilization. This should make i t easier for the scientist of the future to step into the world assured of a friendly greeting by his fellow man. In summing up, then, before stepping o u t of his laboratory and embarking upon a perilous voyage into the world of men, the scientist should keep in mind the following principles: He should learn to differentiate between things and people, and when dealing with the latter should remember the basic principles of tact and politeness. He should become a good citizen by obtaining a knowledge of important events a n d by learning to evaluate these events objectively. This can best be accomplished by the study of American history. He should develop the ability to see the over-all picture and cultivate a sense of beauty. A sound acquaintance with the arts will help him along these lines. In conjunction with his professional societies h e should endeavor to present a true picture of his part in the national scheme of things to the general public. Having complied with these four principles, it i s likely that the well-trained scientist can follow the advice of Mr. DuBois b y stepping out of his laboratory i n t o public life to benefit all concerned. AND
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