EDITORIALLY S P E A K I N G
Who Enlightens for Science? The vital question, w h o speaks for science?, current,ly is being debated in many circles. The outcome of these debates may well provide more trenchant and more representative expression to the needs and attitudes of the scientific community. Hopefully it also will define more succinctly and more compellingly the role and responsibility of the scient,ist in the American society. Never have such debates been more relevant or more essential. They come at the height of an era when the fruits of science proffer simultaneously unprecedented opportunit,ies and incredible danger for all-an era when the comprehensibility gap between scientists and nonscientists, regardless of educat,ion or intellect, is widening exponentially. Many feel that this comprehensibility gap constitutes a major potential hazard to civilization-a hazard avoidahle only through viable enlightenment of a large segment of societ,y in the content, potential, and limitations of science. If this is true, it would seem appropriate t,o raise the question, who enlightens for science? Undoubtedly the consensus answer to this question would be: it. is the science teachers who enlighten for science. Snrely this is their forte, their special province, their venerable calling. Besides, those not teaching might find this task onerous. For example, the industrial scientists could say that proprietary matt,ers prevent their functioning in this role; government scientist,s could reply that the strong mission orientation of their assignments precludes their participation; ot,her research scientists could plead that the urgency and intensity of their efforts to gain new knowledge thwart any desire they might have to assist. Among chemists, representatives of each area might point out t,hat their own knowledge of the other areas is insufficient to do justice to a mission so sensitive and so important,. Teachers also could express some qualms about their own qualificat,ionsand ability to play, with competence and aplomb, the role of enlightener for the general citizenry. After all, the industrial and government scientists, for some excellent reasons, often are especially slow to communicate significant new developments, even to teachers. And many other research scientists, also with understandable exigency, appear t,o be so completely immersed in important work that their
communications are direct,edmore and more toward an est,ablishment of similarly oriented super-specialists. THISJOURNAL sometimes experiences difficulty finding authors who are sufficiently knowledgeable and lucid to bring important new knowledge in chemistry to the teachers of chemistry. Even if communicat,ion between teachers and other scientists were ideal, there still remains the hard fact that no teacher, no researcher, no author can possibly know enough to make a continuing well-bslanced presentation. It seems clear that, despite Herculean current efforts by many groups, no scientist or group of scientists can hope to do this job successfully without active support from the rest of the scientific community. This kind of support has been unattainable in the past. Where then can t.he society turn for competent enlightenment in science? Certainly not to the substandard science fiction of the TV commercial or to the neighborhood man-about-science whose main source of information is a vivid imagination and a catalog from an electronics supplier. Some popular magazines have carried excellent articles on science. Their excellence undoubtedly is due to good uvriting and research by reporters of high ability coupled with considerable assistance from distinguished scientists. We underitand that more such articles would appear if cooperation from the scient,ific community were easier to obtain. In essence then it appears that the exponential widening of the comprehensibility gap is the result of both the knowledge explosion and the failure of the scientific community to come to grips seriously with the problem of narrowing the gap. Science, as exciting, ss significant, as fulfilling as it might be to those of us engaged in its pursuit, is not an island isolated from the rest of society. Neither is it like a well which provides only clean, refreshing water to quench the thirst of a parched and impoverished civilization. Rather, it is more like the oxygen we breathe-ssential to survival, safe if used properly, deadly in the hands of the unwise or the uninformed. KO scientist today need ask on whom the mantle of responsibility for enlightening the society in science falls-it falls on each of us. WTL Volume 44, Number 8, Augusf 1967
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