THE ORGANISATION OF MAN'S FUTURE
THE day after the publication of the recent honours list, the New York Times said something to this effect : " We all know England is dead. But for some extraordinary reason it is alive in one respect ; we still have to admit that its science is the best in the world. So why does not England honour some of its scientists instead of this crew of nonentities? . . ." As a rule, American opinion is shrewder and better informed than we like to believe. In this particular case, the compliment is deserved as well as the stricture. English science, taking it all round, still happens to be the best. And also, at any rate for the last few years, English thought about science has been as rich and original as English science itself. There has been nothing anywhere else quite comparable with the scientific humanism expressed in Professor Hogben's two popular books, and this present production by Professor Bernal.
It is a unique book. It contains an accumulation of know- ledge and a passion for ideas that are not likely to be com- bined again in one man for a long time to come. The ex- travagant fertility of ideas, indeed, may put off readers at a first glance; the density of facts, references, and new concep- tions per page is so great that the book is not easy reading, even if one is fairly familiar with the subject matter. The style sometimes introduces another difficulty, for it is often knotted and lacking in the kind of glow and warmth that would help one to get over the necessary complexities of the subject. (Occasionally it reaches a very simple and moving eloquence, as in a passage which might serve as a text for the entire book : " There is no longer any technical reason why everyone should not have enough to eat. There is no reason why anyone should do more than three or four hours of dis- agreeable or monotonous work a day, or why they should be forced, by economic pressure, to do even that. War, in a period of potential plenty and ease for all, is sheer folly and cruelty. The greater part of disease in the world today is due directly or indirectly to lack of food and good living conditions. All these are plainly remediable evils, and no one can feel that science has been properly applied until they are swept off the face of the earth. But that is only the beginning.")
Yet, despite those superficial difficulties, on the one hand of overmuch concentration—the book would be easier reading if it were five times as long—and on the other of care- lessness and a certain impatience with the technique of exposi- tion, the book ought to be read page by page and note by note by anyone who wishes to understand the present place of science in the world and the choices before mankind in the future. The bock is actually divided into two parts : first, an analysis of the present state of science, and, second, an account of what science could do if it were organised to produce the maximum good for the human race.
Of the two parts, the second is probably the better, but they both show the same great virtues and the same idiosyn- crasies and flaws. The first part begins with a statement of belief, which runs through the entire work, that we are living in one of the major transformations of history. Mr. Bernal writes in another place : —" The first revolution was the foundation of society, by which men became different from the animals and found, through the new habit of transmission of experience from generation to generation, a means of advance altogether faster and more sure than the evolutionary struggle. The second revolution was the discovery of civilisation, based on agriculture, and bringing with it a manifold development of specialised techniques, but above all the social forms of the city and trade." And the third is the struggle for the scientific control of man's destiny, of which our temporary troubles are the froth on the surface; this book presumes that that struggle will be successful in the end, and in its second part itself becomes a blue-print of the future. But before that comes we must undergo the struggle; and the analysis of the first part confines itself to the frustration of science in this between- times world. There is first a short and brilliant history of science, sometimes shot through with a pleasant subfusc humour as in note v :—" Hooke, who ranks as the greatest experimenter of the seventeenth century, was as curator oblic-?.d to produce two original experiments a week for the Society." This must have been the most onerous task ever given to any scientist; it is sad to think of the entry in the minutes, " This week Mr. Hooke failed." The analysis then deals with, the existing organisation of research, science in education, the efficiency with which research is done, and its applications when it is actually completed in the present world, leading to the use of science in war and to international science at a time when the world is darkening.
All these topics are criticised with the- same profound know- ledge, extraordinary mental energy, and vision of the better- ment of man. You cannot read any of the chapters without feeling that you are in good company : good in every sense of the word, devoted as well as entertaining. But you also have to maintain your own critical sense at a high level of activity ; four-fifths of Bemal's criticisms are just and informed, and the frustrations of science which he analyses could be removed by conscious organisation. But one-fifth of those frustrations do not result from faulty organisation, or the lack of any ; he blames a little too much on the system and has a little too much faith in organisation ; there are a good many injustices, defects, and stupidities in the institution of science which arise simply because men are men.' That is no reason, however— as pleasant-minded men excuse themselves by thinking—for not removing all the frustrations which lie within our power. It is better, of course, to adopt Mr. Bernal's attitude, and try to remove too much.
But it is necessary to repeat that this attitude would occa- sionally benefit from a dash of scepticism or pragmatism or cynicism, to use words that he himself employs in a pejorative sense. There are times in the book when he appears to enjoy organisation for its own sake; and, entangled in his own web of organisation, he loses his instinct for reality. Thus he is probably unduly fascinated by the administrative machinery of Russian science, and unduly charitable in attributing its lack of achievement to the absence of a scientific tradition. That is part of the truth, but almost certainly not all ; it is, perhaps, not just a piece of irony that the intellectual fields in which Russia unquestionably leads the world today happen to be some of the more abstract branches of pure mathematics and the game of chess.
The same general criticism holds for the second, construc- tive part of the book. There are many suggestions, like those for the publication of scientific work (chapter xi) which could and ought to be carried into effect tomorrow. There are a few which could not be used while we remain substantially the same species.
But no other book of this range and vision is going to appear for many years. It is the testament of one of the few minds
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