ANALVTICAL EDITORIAL
September 1968,Vol. 40, No. 11 1111111111111
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Science, Technology, and Humanity entitled “The Great American Frustration” (Saturday Review, *July 13, 1968), the noted poet and literary critic Archibald MacLeish takes science and technology to task for many of the ills of modern society. H e states that the loyalty of Science is not to humanity but “to truth-its own truth,” and that the law of science is not “the law of the good-what humanity thinks of as good, meaning moral, decent, humane- but the law of the possible.” H e goes on to criticize the higher education system for a vocationalism that has permeated through the graduate schools to the colleges. H e argues t h a t society should manage science and technology to help humanity achieve its human goals rather than to allow them to take mankind wherever their achievements make it possible to go. It is the mission of science to strive for understanding of nature and of technology to exploit understanding to men’s ends. Surely we cannot distinguish “good” truth from “bad” truth, and just as surely we cannot hope to “manage” science in its quest for truth. Society can determine the stress to be placed upon science by regulating its funding and it can hope to manage technology toward desirable goals. B u t all of society, not just the technologists, shares in the responsibility as well as the benefits of our investment and in its fruits. The central question is whether technology should largely be held to blame for the ailments and frustrations of humanity and whether the world would be a better place iii which to live if there had been a lesser emphasis on science and technology. As a minimum achievement, science and technology can claim credit for postponing the dire prediction of Malthus that the exponential growth of population must inevitably overtake the linear growth nf food with starvation as the result. Without science and its exploitation, humanity by now would have endured starvation on a world-wide scope rather than just in the technologically less advanced areas. The slavery that built the pyramids of Egypt has largely disappeared, not because of basic improvements in human nature, but because technology has rendered slave labor uneconomical in most parts of the world. As for vocationalism, what nobler purpose can higher education serve than teaching the methods of searching for new knowledge, and what better way is there to teach those methods than by practicing the search? Vniversities serve not only as storehouses and vendors of knowledge, but as an agency through which society fosters and develops its search for understanding. It is in the nature of man to explore, and exploration of the boundaries of knowledge is among the highest purposes of man. T o attempt to manage or control that quest is not just futility; it is folly. I N A RECEKT ARTICLE
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For submission of manuscripts, see page 2 A . VOL. 40, NO. 1 1 , SEPTEMBER 1968
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