Science under Suspicion
By C. E. M. JOAD
IT is some time ago now since men of genius began to throw doubt upon the alleged benefits of applied science. The citizens of Erewhon who in a frenzy of panic and fear destroyed their machines were first introduced to the world by Samuel Butler in 1872, while it is nearly half a century since Matthew Arnold greeted the introduction of a new London tramway route by asking what was the good of a vehicle which would convey passengers rapidly (sic) from Islington to Camberwell, if the sole effect of the change was to take them from a dull and illiberal civilization in Islington to a dull and illiberal civilization in Camberwell. Fifty years later the doubt has for many of us become a conviction. It is applied science which threatens to end our civilization in the next war• through our inability to control the weapons of destruction which it has devised for our bedevihnent. It is applied science which has brought our economic system to the verge of collapse through our inability to distribute the spate of commodities which its instruments of production have poured forth for our embarrassment. It is applied science which has destroyed the liberties of half a continent, by virtue of the new and unprecedented powers for manufacturing men's minds and moulding their outlook which its instruments of communication—the cinema, the radio and the loud speaker— have placed in the hands of those who would exploit them for their own purposes. Finally, it is applied science which has so numbed and bewildered the ordinary man with its hail of new facts, so overwhelmed him with new powers, required of him such rapid adjustment to the changes which it is con- tinually inducing in his environment, that, like a piece - of elastic stretched to the limit of its pc,w3rs, his mind snaps back, with the result that a deliberate return to the primitive in government and behaviour, in thought and belief, appears, as events upon the Continent bear all too tragical witness, as one of the chief by-products of the scientific age.
With exquisite lucidity, with apparently complete under- standing, and with perfect detachment, Mr. Heard has set out to chronicle the scientific advances which in a single twelve months have helped to transform our world. Material originally delivered as a series of B.B.C. talks has been expanded into a coherent and, I should imagine, fairly com- prehensive picture of the world of science in 1934. We hear of the expanding universe and the infinitely divisible atom, of the origin and inventiveness of life and the nature of early man, of the conquest of pain, of the part played by the ductless glands in determining character, of changes in our senses and of the development of extra senses, of changes in human nature itself. The record has been compiled not only with immense competence but with considerable charm. I doubt if there is anybody now writing who could have ranged the whole field of modern science with an equal air of mastery. I feel sure that no writer could have made his ranging more attractive. Mr. Heard never writes dully ; he never drops into clichés. He is a master of the use of the illustrative simile and metaphor—" If you have developed an eye like a microscope, you are useful for crime detection, but you are disqualified as a traffic director "—what could be better as an explanation of the specialist's inability to direct the uses to which mankind puts the results of his researches ?—and he rises on occasion to the height of his theme with some very eloquent prose.
Deeply apprehensive of the uncontrolled effects of science upon a generation which, having the wit to invent, has not the wisdom to use its inventions for its good, and convinced that many snare his apprehensions, Mr. Heard considers how the dagger may be met. Will science itself call a halt ?
" Sometimes " (he says), " I think we comfort ourselves that
Science in the Making. By Gerald Heard. (Faber. 7e. 6d.) somehow science will blow over . . . the last pantechnicon will roll away, and amid the bales and packing cases we—humanity- shall be able to start really moving in, settling down and sizing up. This wish, I believe, is as strong as it is unexpressed."
But, Mr. Heard concludes, it is unlikely to be gratified. As his survey shows only too clearly, the speed of scientific advance is increasing rather than diminishing. Nor, in the present state of the world, does there seem the slightest pro-
spect of a dictator sending men to concentration camps for publishing results of scientific research which might be put to commercial or military uses.
But cannot scientists themselves control the purposes to which their discoveries are put ? The scientist, it might be said, is also a citizen ; nor does his oft-repeated declaration that science is socially and politically neutral absolve him from social responsibility. But the suggestion is raised only to be dismissed. The scientist may be a citizen, but he is a powerless citizen. For one thing he has no qualifications for social inter- ference and management. For another, if he had them, his fellow-citizens would not allow him to exercise them. The inventions which have changed the face of the world are the fruit of the labours of a few dozen men of genius assisted by a few hundred talented laboratory workers. It is, to say the least of it, unlikely that men so few and so specialized should be able to control the desires of unregenerate human beings.
For science, the fact is obvious, does not change human desires or alter human purposes ; it only makes it easier for men to gratify the desires they already have, to further the purposes that alrca ly seem good to them. - Nor, until there is a science of human nature, will scientists as such be capable of directing these desires or of dictating these purposes.
What, then, remains ? That the common man should himself assume responsibility for controlling the effects of science upon his life. The hope, perhaps, is a slender one, but the first condition of its realization is that the common man should know what it is that he has to control. Hence the motive behind the writing of Mr. Heard's book. He writes because he conceives it to be the duty of the layman " to know in broad outline the front of science, how that front as a whole is moving and what sectors are at the moment most likely to undermine and transform the practical ways of mankind."
At the end of the book Mr. Heard considers the state of a science-sated community. Let us suppose that all the forces of the physical world have been exploited, that nature has surrendered all her powers, that pain has been conquered, disease eliminated, and every human need met. What then ? Will labour-saving devices and creation-saving amusements spread a boredom so .intense that men will be driven to forgo the benefits of science with the object of making life hard and dangerous, in the hope that they may again find it interesting ?
Possibly, but not necessarily. For in such a world disinter- ested curiosity, the ability to be interested in things which can- not possibly be of use to us, will come into its own. Mr. Heard goes further and suggests that a new kind of natural selection will come into play which will tend to eliminate all those who are not capable of feeling disinterested curiosity. Selection in the past has narrowed rather than enlarged the range of human interests, suppressing every " taste for things which did not serve a vital need, every ' idle ' curiosity, every apprehension
of interests, happenings and meanings beyond bare physical requirements." In the scientific millennium this restriction will no longer be necessary, and the salvation of our species will depend upon our ability to transform our present interests in how to convert things to our purposes into an interest in the things in themselves. It is, in fact, the ultimate purpose of the scientist to make himself superfluous by paving the way for the philosopher and the artist.
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