Chemical Education Today
From Past Issues
The Place of Science in the Modern World: A Speech by Robert Millikan by Kathryn R. Williams
I continue to be amazed by the many directions that past issues of JCE have taken me: phone calls to California to learn the fate of a 150-year-old oak tree (1), microfilms of The New York Times to check on a snowstorm in 1929 (2), my desk drawer to fish out and use a neglected slide rule (3). This contribution led to readings from the between-wars era of the late 1920s. The May 1930 issue contains a report on the dedication of the new science building at Millsaps College (4), a type of article not particularly unusual at the time. Faculty, trustees, officials of the Methodist Church, and representatives from 35 other educational institutions gathered at the campus in Jackson, Mississippi, for the event on Thanksgiving Day, 1929. The keynote speaker, 1923 Nobel laureate Robert Millikan, expressed his personal feelings about “The Place of Science in the Modern World” (5). The address appeared as “Alleged Sins of Science” in the February 1930 Scribner’s Magazine (6), which permitted JCE to reprint the article as part of its coverage of the Millsaps celebration. Millikan’s comments are directed to a 1928 book by Raymond Fosdick, “one of the best-informed and most intelligent of Americans”. In The Old Savage in the New Civilization (7), Fosdick built a strong case against “science”, which is seen by him and numerous leaders as the root of many societal concerns. According to Fosdick, the scientific revolution of the 19th and early 20th centuries “changed the whole complexion of human life.” We have all heard the story: our (then) primarily rural society, which produced and consumed life’s necessities locally, became increasingly urbanized with unprecedented global connections. Mass-produced goods replaced the craftwork of individual artisans—only a short step, according to Fosdick, to “standardized thinking”. A populace once burdened with 16-hour workdays found itself with much more free time but lacked the cultural basis to use leisure time effectively. But these consequences ranked below Fosdick’s primary concern—the increasing efficiency and power of the tools of destruction in the hands of the old savage, “irrational, impulsive, emotional, inherently conservative to change, bound by customs and traditions he will not analyze”. If your knowledge of American history is better than mine, you may recollect Raymond Fosdick’s name as Undersecretary of the League of Nations. At the time Fosdick wrote The Old Savage…, the League promised to be “The New Technique in International Relations”, the title and topic of the final chapter in his book. Unfortunately, as even those of us unsteeped in history know, the United States Senate never ratified the League covenant, and the organization failed to meet Fosdick’s altruistic expectations. Although I did not keep count, I am quite certain that “machine” ranks as the most heavily used noun in Fosdick’s
Photograph of Robert A. Millikan, Frontispiece, Journal of Chemical Education, May 1930.
book. To Fosdick, “machines” were the fruits of physical science. “[Science] is advancing by leaps and bounds, gaining impetus with each new year. It is giving us more machines, faster machines, machines increasingly more intricate and complex…In brief, science has multiplied man’s physical powers ten thousand fold and in like ratio has increased his capacity both for construction and destruction.” Millikan used his presentation at Millsaps to try to refute these negative images of science. I hope to show that his talk still conveys its message today. But if you read it in its entirety—and I urge you to do so—be sure to remove your 21st-century hat for the first few pages. Otherwise, many of his observations and predictions may seem like mistaken relics. Millikan states, “it is highly improbable that there is any appreciable amount of available subatomic energy for man to tap”—a prediction which proved false only a few years later. I think we all agree that “every scientific advance finds ten times as many new, peaceful, constructive uses as it finds destructive ones.” But sadly, the assertion that war “is now in process of being abolished chiefly by the relentless advance of science, its most powerful enemy” has not come to fruition. Regarding the effects of science on society, Millikan claims that “modern society and its applications have… produced the most profound and beneficial social changes that the world has ever seen.” His examples include the increase in the buying power of the average worker and the opportunity for education and entertainment afforded by radio and motion pictures. Disregarding the Depression era, I suppose these claims have remained valid, but I doubt that a Carnegie study performed today would indicate that “modern science and its applications have actually resulted in increasing the amount of reading done by the average man in Middle Town more than three hundred per cent”.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 7 July 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education
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Chemical Education Today
From Past Issues ing as from further social studies…. Let us not hold back anywhere in the search for knowledge.
I am not in general disturbed by expanding knowledge or increasing power, but I begin to
Millikan also attacks science’s alleged exalting of the material at the expense of the spiritual.
be disturbed when this comes coincidentally
If this means providing food and clothing and wholesome living conditions for millions upon millions of people… then science must plead guilty.
with a decrease in the sense of moral values.
[But] I myself think that the aforementioned changes represent an increase rather than a decrease in what I call ‘spiritual values,’ i.e., an increase in the essential spirit… epitomized in the Golden Rule.
If these two occur together, whether they bear any relationship or not, there is real cause for
After all that, is there any one who still talks about the materialism of science? Rather does the scientist join with the psalmist of thousands of years ago in reverently proclaiming ‘the Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth his handiwork.’ The God of Science is the spirit of rational order and of orderly development, the integrating factor in the world of atoms and of ether and of ideas and of duties and of intelligence. Materialism is surely not a sin of modern science.
alarm. (5, p 1073)
I couldn’t help laughing when I read Millikan’s defense of the Ford assembly line. The man who is capable of seeing beyond his nose… [sees] what these cars are doing to the life of the common man…, realizes that driving a car in crowded streets is in itself a highly skilled occupation, which develops in large measure the qualities of sobriety, alertness, and intelligence…, [and] sees that all these 8400 Ford cars turned out per day must be serviced by thousands of wide-awake, courteous, attractive service-station men.
When was the last time your tank was filled by an attendant? These dubious predictions notwithstanding, Millikan’s insights extended beyond the observations of the assemblyline advocate to the fundamental issues attending the transformation of society by modern science—issues obvious to both himself and to Fosdick and equally prevalent today. The scientific revolution led to changes so drastic that “no past time has known and no future time can know so sudden and so complete a transformation.” However, “the spirit of change has been caught where its basis has been wanting.” Citing his own discipline of physics, Millikan relieves science of these offenses. In physics and its applications these changes have been made by men who were fully conversant with the past, men who knew the difference between perpetual-motion cranks and real discoverers…. But unfortunately many of the other fields in which the spirit of change is rife have no such criteria for past or present truth,… so that in these fields we cannot be certain whether the changes represent progress or retrogression.
On the other hand, considering social reforms, there is virtue in the change-for-the-sake-of-change mentality. That the spirit of change is in the air obviously helps rather than hinders in the case of these needed social readjustments. The whole question however is, ‘Do we know enough yet to make any particular change?’ The answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. In the latter case the new knowledge that is still needed is just as likely to come from further physical experiment-
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As he nears the end of his speech, Millikan joins Fosdick in questioning whether this particular generation of Americans has the moral qualities that make it safe to trust it with the immensely increased knowledge and the correspondingly increased power which has come into its possession. I am not in general disturbed by expanding knowledge or increasing power, but I begin to be disturbed when this comes coincidentally with a decrease in the sense of moral values. If these two occur together, whether they bear any relationship or not, there is real cause for alarm. The remedy, however, is obviously not to try to hold back the wheels of scientific progress, but rather to use every available energy, religious, social, educational, as individuals, as groups, and as a nation, to stay the spread of the spirit of selfishness, lawlessness, and disintegration.
It behooves all of us to ponder Millikan’s words—in light of the many tragedies and successes of the 20th century and the relevance to this new century of change. Literature Cited 1. 2. 3. 4.
Williams, K. R. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 1322–1323. Williams, K. R. J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 148–149. Williams, K. R. J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 436–437. Sullivan, J. M. J. Chem. Educ. 1930, 7, 1059–1061; 1073– 1080. 5. Millikan, R. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1930, 7, 1061–1073. 6. Millikan, R. A. Scribner’s Magazine 1930, 87, 119–129. 7. Fosdick, R. B. The Old Savage in the New Civilization; Doubleday, Doran & Co: Garden City, NY, 1929.
Kathryn R. Williams is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Florida, PO Box 117200, Gainesville, FL 326117200;
[email protected].
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 78 No. 7 July 2001 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
