Science and Humanity
To the flditor: The editorial, "Addiction on the Campus," provided an excellent chance for the freshman chemistry class to consider the problem of responsibility, not only with respect to the drug problem, but also the role of science in our Twentieth Century culture. It was obvious from the beginning that among the 80 members of the class participating in the discussion there was a tendency for division of the class into those viewing the problems as students of the humanities versus that segment seeing these same issues in terms of the community of science. If there was one common bond among all of the students it was relative to the tensions which modern society creates in all human beings. Man is expected t,o do more than has ever been required of him in the past and this technical mechanism has forced him to exert undreamed of efforts, these efforts being of such complexity as to cause man to lose more and more of his personal identity aud to see himself as becoming nothing more than a computer number. There was general feeling that, more and more, the student senses himself becoming a computer number in society; he is taught by a television tube, or a film strip, or a series of lecturers ~vithnone of whom can he find anything tangible to identify himself. High on the list of tensions seems to be the ever present awareness of total war and the nuclear warhead hanging over him. Such a war stands to threaten the very meaningof humanlifein whatever manner such alife may be defined. The call for animal submissions and the psychic pressures imposed on the human being tend to produce nervous tensions which are beyond that human mind to contemplate let alone comprehend. The suffering, fatigue, noise, movement, and brutality envisioned as part of this impending disaster lead the student to see himself as an object living for one purpose only: to be killed. Some of the students (especially true for many students of the humanities) believe that this Promethean situation has been the direct responsibility of science and technology. Some of these same students argue that no blame can be laid at their feet for resorting to the psychotomimetic drugs if only for a temporary escape from the dilemma which confronts them. In the words of Sir McFarlane Burnet some of the students believe that, "It seems almost indecent to hint that, as far as the advance of medicine (some would say science) is concerned, molecular biology may be an evil thing. It, is becoming all too evident that there are dangers in knowing what should not he known. But no one has ever heeded the voice of a Cassandra." The opinion was voiced by one, however, that, in the words of Conant, "There never has been a discovery of the physical sciences that has not strengthened the 184
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hand of the Good Samaritan." Science cannot he blamed for the ultimate use to which its discoveries are put. I t is possible, however, in the words of George Buttrick, that, "The world can only he a better place when there are better men in it." Dominating the core of the discussion is the responsibility of science in these issues of today. If science is the one concept which cannot be ignored in the Twent,ieth Century, and if it fails to meet its challenge, will science meet the same fate as befell the poetry of the Renaissance? Mathew Arnold once said that, "Poetry has one basic function; that is to criticize life." Louis Kampf has charged that the literary intellectual of today is, "Spending his time explicating, analyzing structures, and examining genres. So many papers, so much work, so many monographs and pamphlets by the literary academy must be a sign of robust health. But it is the very bustle which confuses, which leads one to ask just what t,he objectives of the profession are. Are the literary intellectuals of today doing more than just gat,hering facts and making random commeuts upon them?" Some of the discussion was directed toward the role of poetry and humanism as a major force in the Renaissance and what caused it to lose this powerful influence which it once had. The comment was made that the humanist always shouts his humanism only after the technician has intervened; but, if it were true humanism, this intervention would have occurred before the conflict. Do any of these statements about the poetry of the Renaissance have any meaning for the science of the Twentieth Century? The student discussion was directed toward a statement of Gerald Holton when he spoke of "a curious mixture of arrogance and humility" which characterizes the scientist of today as he attempts a rational explanat,ion of nature and her laws. It is possible that these same two ingredients characterized the religion of the Middle Ages and the poetry of the Renaissance and until such time that the former dominated the latter, man respected these cultural forces? Is there'any message here for science as the cultural force of the Twentieth Century? I t appears that the scientist of today is pleading for everyone to respect him for what he does. It would he hard to estimate the total amount of money, labor, committee effort, and time spent since 1951 to improve the programs designed to upgrade the teaching of science and to encourage more young people to enter the discipline of science. These efforts have witnessed special committees on the teaching of science, NSF grants for summer institutes and research, innumerable monographs on the subject, Science Fairs, all manner of teaching aids, and special testing programs. Success in this effort, if not universal so far as the underprivileged colleges are concerned, should certainly be showiug a profit in the long-established and financially strong colleges and universities. And yet, schools like Harvard are observing some two hundred students each year leaving the sciences for the humanities. The principal reason given by these students is that science cannot sate the intellectual appetite of those students who want to know what life and people are all about.
The problem doesn't seem to be how science is taught but what it seems to be. Many of the students argue that all of this effort in the teaching of science is being directed toward introducing the true meaning of science and its method to the nonscience student. At the same time, say these students, the scientist himself is incapable of any hut the emptiest platitudes when he strays from his own specialty. His statements are vague generalities: to render human nature more beautiful, nobler, and more harmonious; to assure the triumph of peace, liberty, and reason; to eliminate the cultural lag. At the same time, however, it is impossible to have confidence in men who lack the faculties of criticism, discrimination, judgment, and option. It may be that the scientist has opted for arrogance a t the expense of that other ingredient, humility. Perhaps it will be concluded that man must strive for more than Seahorg's Post Office, reclamation project, and a science laboratory as an integral part of every state. When the social sciences, the humanities, the heritage of man's spirit, and the flourishing state of Twentieth Century science all work together, only then will the imbalances of each one he corrected and the vigor of each enhanced. Science must address itself to the problems of society in ways other than mere statement of the second law of thermodynamics. Young scientists must be made to realize a h a t has been the philosophy and history of science, what science can do, how far it can lead us, and what it is that makes science a cultural force. The scientist must be involved and make the nonscientist aware of this involvement. One of the students quoted Joseph Wood Krutch who said, "(He) is willing to consider the possibility of man being saved from the present perilous state by philosophy, religion, sensibility, or anything that depends upon the free functioning of the human intellect and spirit. Rut (he) will not be saved by propaganda, manipulation, and conditioning. These latter techniques can only t.ransform us into well behaved puppets; that would not be salvation but thc damnation of an eternal death."
Chemical Transport and Zirconium
To the Editor: With reference to the recent article in THIS JOURNAL^ on "Chemical Transport Reactions" I would like to draw attention to a very recent paper2 which discusses the purification of zirconium by the Van Arkel filament method. Until recently the maximum observed in the rate of deposition of zirconium has been thought to be due to the formation of involatile lower iodides, which reduced the concentration of halogen in the gas phase, thus lowering the rate of deposition of metal via zirconium tetraiodide.
It now seems likely that the mechanism causing the maximum is a change in the pressure dependency of the iodine diffusion coefficient. At low temperatures the rate of metal deposition is proportional only to the pressure of iodine at the filament, but as the temperature rises, the rate becomes proportional to the total pressure +t the filament (iodine plus zirconium tetraiodide). This suggestion is important in that it uses a simple mass transfer explanation instead of a relatively complex chemical one, particularly since the conditions required to produce the lower iodides3 are far removed from those used in the Van Arkel process.
Negative Catalyst
T o the Editor: I n the July issue of THIS JOURNAL (45, 477, (1968)), J. A. Young and J. G. Malik, in an answer to a chemical query regarding the difference between a negative catalyst and an inhibitor, explain that "the negative catalyst would be like an inert substance, substantially ineffective." This conclusion of the aforesaid authors seems to be based upon the mechanistics of the action of a catalyst which they have invoked in order to differentiate between a (positive) catalyst and a negative catalyst. Thus they conclude that "a negative catalyst would be a substance which when present in a reacting system provided a new path for the formation of products from reactants, but which path has a higher energy of activation than the energy of activation for the reaction mechanism which takes place between and among the reactants alone. So a negative catalyst would not slow down a reaction; the reactants would merely react to form products in the same manner, in the presence or absence of such a negative catalyst." Although there seems to be no inconsistency in the arguments of Young and Malik, their mechanistic (and not the prevailing phenomenological) approach is liable to cause some confusion. For example, according to Paul H. Emmett ["Encyclopedia in Chemistry" (2nd ed.), Editors: CLARK,GEORGEL., AND HAWLY,GESSNER G., Reinhold Publishing Gorp., New York, 1966, p. 1871 "One common theory of the action of negative catalysts is that they combine with and remove from the system traces of positive catalysts, or they combine with intermediates in a chain reaction in such a way as to break the reaction chain" which will obviously result in the retardation of the reaction. Identical views have been expressed by E. Abel ["Proceedings of the International Congress on CataVolume 46, Number 3, March 1969
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