SCIENCE AND MAN
Sts,—As a technician, the next best (or worst) thing to a scientist, may I sincerely endorse the sentiments expressed by Gordon Miller in " Science and Man "? I have repeatedly tried to put such thoughts ;nut words, but so far have had little success in overcoming the disability of being inarticulate, so common to the technician who has spent his mental life immersed in mathematical jargon.
There must be many youngsters like myself who have undergone long years of apprenticeship and have spent several years taking a degree in engineering or science at a university, and who in consequence of that education have suffered a rude philosophical awakening. To have arrived at a feeling of complete futility engendered by such thoughts as those expounded by Gordon Miller is not a happy state of affairs at an age when added responsibilities such as marriage are contemplated.
What are we to do? Can we lightly sweep aside that training so hardly gained and study perhaps for a degree in economics or sociology? We have been, most of us, recipients of the somewhat doubtful benefits of scholarships, living from day to day as it were. Can we now throw up our first lucrative employment with little in the bank to see us through the next stage in our development? And yet, thinking as we do, if we go forward with the career chosen before mature thought and much reading could indicate the right road, we are doomed to failure. For modern technics is so complex that it requires complete concentration upon a very limited field and calls for an almost monastic outlook with an absolute faith in the worthwhileness of scientific and technical progress as a whole. Surely it is up to our elders to show us the way out of the century of scientific man. What in God's name can we do?—Yours
Previous page
