E-Book Content
Modern
Modern
by
JAMES
B.
and
Science
Man
CONANT
Columbia University Press,
New
York
1952, Columbia University Press, First printing
New
York
1952
Second printing Third printing Published
in tircat Britain, Canada, India, and Pakistan by Geoffrey Cumberlcgc, Oxford University Press London, Toronto. Bombay, and Karachi
MANUFACTURED
IN
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
Science and Technology in the Last Decade
The Changing Science and
Scientific Scene,
Human Conduct
Science and Spiritual Values
1900-1950
3
31
60 84
Modern
Science
Modern
and
Man
Science
and Technology
in the Last
A FEW why
I
Man"
WORDS may be
have chosen the
Decade
in order at the outset to explain
title
"Modern Science and Modern
for this scries of four lectures.
When
I
was honored
by the invitation to be the Bampton lecturer for 1952, President Eisenhower expressed on behalf of the committee the hope that I would undertake to provide "some understanding of the significance of recent developments in the physical sciences/' On my inquiring as to the
was assured that professional philosophers and scientists would be conspicuous by their absence. My exposition, if not aimed at the pronature of the audience,
I
verbial man-on-the-street,
was to be directed to the equally
proverbial college graduate
whom
the hypothetical individual
college presidents welcome each commencement to the fellowship of educated men. Being thus assured that I was not expected either to give an appraisal of
Science and Technology
4
the impact of physics on metaphysics or a technical account of the inner workings of the atom, I gratefully
accepted the privilege of being a guest lecturer at Columbia University.
Under the terms I
was
In
my
still
of reference thus graciously arranged,
left great latitude as to
endeavors to narrow
down
few that could be handled
to a
four lectures,
I
my
choice of topics.
a vast array of subjects in a general fashion in
asked myself, what are the recent develop-
ments of physical science that are significant to those young men and women now graduating from our colleges
and
universities?
the
trite
answer
you are more
To
ask this question
in three words: the
is
to
optimistic, with a variant,
Now
come up with
atomic bomb. Or
if
atomic energy.
admittedly extremely today to make an address without referring in some way to atomic bombs; particularly so if the speaker, as in my case, has been to some degree concerned with the development of these weapons. Yet an exposition of the elementary it
difficult
is
about nuclear physics or an appraisal of the military possibilities of atomic bombs, or an estimate of the peaceful uses of atomic energy surely this is not what is exfacts
pected from a ical
Bampton
lecturer in 1952.
The
technolog-
implications of recent developments in physics
and
chemistry are certainly of the utmost importance, but a popular exposition of them would not go to the heart of the question that I ra