LETTER TO DR BUSH FROM ALLEN DULLES

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• Collection: General CIA Records
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• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 6, 2002
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: December 15, 1955
• Content Type: LETTER

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23 October 1954
Dr. Vannevar Belsh_J
Carnegie Institution of Washington
1530 P Street, N. W.
Washington 5, D. C.
Dear Van:
Many thanks for the copy of your lecture
on Scientific Motivation. I have read it with the
greatest interest.
At the moment I am smoking your pipe
which is a constant rear of yen, and also
reminds n that I should like to see you very
soon.
Faithfully,
Allen W. Dulles
Director
AWD: at
Distribution:
Prig - Addressee
1 cc - DCI File
1 c c - ER
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THE R. A. F. PENROSE, JR., MEMORIAL LECTURE
SCIENTIFIC MOTIVATION
VANNEVAR BUSH
President, Carnegie Institution of Washington
(Read April 22, 1954)
IN a general lecture of this sort it is sometimes
worth while to attempt to view the current status
of scientific effort, to focus upon the crucial points
where advance is most rapid, thus to catch a glim-
mer of where we stand and where we may now be
headed, and on this basis to ponder on the motiva-
tion which urges us on. This is a difficult thing
to do, and no two men will formulate alike even
the present status of our understanding. Science
is so vast, even when the discussion is confined to
the natural sciences, the scene is so diverse in
aspect, that such attempts often succeed merely in
giving false impressions of simplicity. They are
bound to leave out entirely areas from which the
most important advances may emerge, they are
bound to be colored by personal background, and,
in place of a clear summary, they may merely
produce more confusion. Yet the attempt may be
worth while, if for no other reason, because it is
refreshing to back out of the laboratory and the
library and gaze out over the landscape. So, with
full realization that every man will describe the
landscape for himself and emphasize features dear-
est to him, with recognition that one can only pick
and choose, let us take a look.
We need not spend much time with the physi-
cists. They are busy digging into the nucleus of
the atom, picking off a new elementary particle
every few weeks, speaking a mathematical lan-
guage which completely bars the unsophisticated
from participating in the excitement of their delv-
ing. They seem to be having a very good time
among themselves, but they have left the rest of
us for a time;. and we can merely hope they will
later come up for air and tell us in a common
language what it is all about. From a distance it
appears that they may soon quit multiplying par-
ticles and tell us more about how one transforms
into another, settling down perhaps again to a very
few that are truly fundamental. We can sym-
pathize with their difficulty in educating the rest
of us; for, as they attack the forces binding the
nucleus, their formulations necessarily take mathe-
matical forms which have nothing to do with
familiar things-nor should we expect them to.
As they proceed there seems to be less of neo-
Pythagoreanism among them, a bit less mysticism.
One does not so often hear today that indetermi-
nacy introduces chance into nature, provides a
place for free will, denies causality. Rather it
appears, more simply, merely to set a limit be-
yond which experimentation can no longer sub-
stantiate theory ; and this limitation may provide
permanent room for alternative formulations. Yet
there seems to be no harm in this, and it does
render the job interesting. So we may well leave
the theoretical physicists to their own devices for
a bit; it will be some time before we can under-
stand them. And, when they toss out results
which strongly affect other areas of effort, we
shall certainly know about it, as we did when they
split the atom into substantial pieces. In the
meantime, classic physics is being left largely to
the applied physicists and the engineers. It has
become difficult to tell these two groups apart, just
as it is often hard to tell a Democrat from a Re-
publican. And classic physics is bounding for-
ward, giving us new materials and new instru-
ments, clarifying somewhat the solid state, giving
birth to wholly new varieties of electronics, even
beginning to make some sense out of the weather.
So, let us turn to a field where trends are much
clearer and arguments are easier to grasp, where
we look at large things rather than little ones.
The cosmologists are having a field day ; several
road blocks have been removed, and they may be
about to give us a consistent picture of the origins
of the universe, its present status, and its future up
to a point. There now seems to be a rapidly
widening. area of agreement among cosmologists,
which is a phenomenon in itself. The red shift
is widely regarded as showing a true expansion,
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as acceptable evidence that the galaxies are rush-
ing away from us into space with velocities roughly
proportional to their distances, rather than that
light becomes weary in its long journey, or that
cosmic dust nips off minute tributes in energy
from the passing photons. The receding veloci-
ties are now measured up to 60 per cent of the
velocity of light, or 180,000 kilometers per second.
There is nothing sure about this theory of an ex-
panding universe as yet ; Finlay-Freundlich and
Born have recently given pause by a theory which
links the red shift with radio waves from space
and leaves the astronomers merely measuring a
temperature instead of a recession. But the rea-
son why true expansion is now so generally ac-
cepted is not so much that insuperable difficulties
are presented by alternative explanations of the
red shift, as perhaps that the expansion hypothesis
is so simple and leads so neatly to intriguing
speculations on the mode of origin of the universe.
There is now in process of refinement a new scale
for the universe ; for some of the early measure-
ments have been found to be faulty, which is hardly
surprising considering their nature ; and the new
scale brings the astronomers and the geophysicists
nearer together on. an estimate of about five billion
years for the age of the visible universe. We are
now told that, five billion years ago, there was
nothing except a mass of nuclear fluid of enormous
density and temperature. Then there was a tre-
mendous explosion, and in the first thirty minutes
following the explosion the elements were formed.
What preposterous temerity-to analyze what hap-
pened in a half hour five billion years ago ! Yet
the hypothesis seems to work, and to yield correct
figures for the ratios of elements we observe.
Then a bit later, mutually receding clouds of gas
condensed to form dust, and the galaxies separated
and evolved. Stars were formed as the dust and
gas condensed, and continue thus to be formed
today. The old Kant-Laplace hypothesis comes
to life, as Weizsacker avoids the pitfall which
once wrecked it-its failure to account for ob-
served angular velocities-by taking into account
turbulent motions and loss of hydrogen from the
evolving system, thus obtaining results which cor-
respond to the composition, spacing, angular veloci-
ties, and masses of the planets. Billions of stars
are conceived to have been born in billions of
galaxies, and it appears that planetary systems
may have been frequently formed. There may,
indeed, be millions of planets with conditions so
nearly similar to those on earth that life such as
we know would be possible, although perhaps still
improbable. The life history of stars is also fall-
ing into line as the atomic energy cycles that main-
tain their brilliance become sorted out, although
we as yet have very little idea why stars occa-
sionally explode.
There are plenty of other mysteries left; for
example, how a star can have an enormous, rapidly
reversing magnetic field. We do not yet know
the distance-speed relations of the galaxies at all
well, or the variation of galaxy spacing with dis-
tance. It may take some time to find out, for we
use the absolute magnitude of a galaxy to meas-
ure its distance. The light coming from the most
remote galaxies that we can observe left them
something like a billion years ago, and so we need
to find out more about the variation of total light
emission with age before the relations can be
pinned down well. Thus we have no present
measure of space curvature ; neither can we say for
sure that the velocities are such as to bar the
hypothesis that expansion is a cyclic performance,
although it appears as though the galaxies were
leaving us, and every other point, irrevocably, and
hence as though we were not just repeating over
and over an explosion and subsequent collapse.
If we do not wish to consider a universe that just
bounces occasionally, we can consider, if we will,
that space itself began with the primeval explo-
sion, that we have a continually altering curvature
of space, that we live in a three-dimensional bub-
ble being blown up in a four-dimensional space.
But, since we are three-dimensional beings, with
three-dimensional minds, we can hardly expect to
proceed at once to go much farther in our specula-
tions. Nevertheless, the cosmologists are now
giving us a logical, consistent pattern of the de-
velopment of the universe. And in doing so they
have obligingly allowed us plenty of further time
on the earth for our speculations and formulations.
We apparently do not need to hurry, except to
fend off the disasters which we ourselves may
create.
We also have a consistent and logical account
of organic evolution on the earth, entirely on a
mechanistic basis. Population genetics and its
statistical treatment have placed natural selection
on its feet so that there is no longer mystery in the
gradual shifts or in the origin of new species. The
story starts with the beginning of life in the for-
tuitous appearance of self-duplicating molecules in
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the primeval seas-still intangible in the haze of
our ignorance of the Pre-Cambrian period-and
proceeds from there. More complex forms ap-
pear as these special molecules combine into forms
capable of seizing materials from their neighbors.
There is no longer difficulty with the second law
of thermodynamics as evolution thus produces
more complex and apparently less probable states,
for it is the organism plus its environment that
constitutes a system, not the organism alone.
Higher species appear, and evolution radiates to
fill all available niches in the environment. There
is also convergence, widely separated lines head-
ing for the same niche, as when wings appear on
pterodactyls, bats, and birds. Overspecialization
occurs and species succumb. Intragroup selection
sometimes carries characteristics to grotesque and
deleterious extremes, and the coupling of genic
systems may produce defects at the same time that
it produces highly adaptive and favorable char-
acters. When an opening in the environment ap-
pears because a group succumbs, it is often strik-
ingly filled from the varied, crowding, evolving
life about, and often again left open for a surprising
length of time when no adjacent forms are ready to
move in. Characteristics which appear to be
evolved at random, and actually detrimental, per-
sist in populations, and sometimes prove to be
highly adaptive when the species shifts to a new
environment, whereupon they become used and
perfected. The interaction between environment
and the statistical trend of the genetics of a popu-
lation is by no means entirely worked out, but it
appears that we have here the key which opens
the door to a valid scheme of natural selection.
Everything I say would be contested in some
quarters, for scientists are unanimous on very
little. But there is today little tendency to call
on vitalist or finalist theories to account for the
marvelous variety and intricacy of living things.
Thus the process of evolution is conceived to have
proceeded mechanically for many hundreds of mil-
lions of years, until finally there appeared the
primates and man. The evolutionists take the ap-
pearance of consciousness during this process in
their stride, and the philosophers now seem to
concentrate on nuts that are not so tough to crack
as this one. So now we have conscious evolution,
with man in partial control of his own destiny,
with the exercise of a free will, tacitly accepted,
appearing out of a wholly mechanistic evolutionary
process, and in the common meaning foreign to its
fundamental tenets.
Many of the old arguments concerning evolu-
tion have dissolved because of the remarkable prog-
ress in genetics. Wearying of sorting the genes
of fruit-fly chromosomes, the geneticists turned to
lower organisms, to bacteria and viruses, to find
there the elementary beginnings of a complex sys-
tem. And they found the same old complexity,
with units of heredity, mutations, and all the rest.
Moreover, reaching somewhat farther up the evo-
lutionary scale, they now find the hereditary proc-
ess to be more and more intricate. Multiple gene
control of characteristics, cross influence of neigh-
boring genes, genetic factors beyond the genes
which control their action, even cytoplasmic in-
heritance appear. Mutagens, moreover, acting on
bacteria, produce mutations over many genera-
tions ; but this is not the inheritance of acquired
characteristics in the old sense ; it is direct action
of environment on a genetic system long treated as
though utterly immune to environmental influence.
Specificity of mutagens does not appear strongly
as yet, but it may. Gone is some of the old as-
surance, the dogmatism which could assert thn
general negative-that the environment has no
influence on the hereditary mechanism-because
a theory and a system had been constructed, mathe-
matical in its precision, thought to be capable in
full development of explaining everything. A set
of genes, self-duplicating chemical compounds, oc-
casionally mutating at random, immortal, passed
from generation to generation without change and
uninfluenced by the host, producing hormones
which in turn controlled all development-this was
much too simple and too pat. It is somewhat dif-
ficult to envisage the way in which such a mecha-
nism could produce a bird with full individual
knowledge of how to build a complex nest or to
follow a pathway of migration, or a spider that
could build a web. The day has not yet arrived
when a student can embark 'upon examination of
possible racial memory in a homing pigeon without
encountering raised eyebrows. But geneticists are
becoming more humble as their systems lead them
deeper into intricacy ; and this is well, for the story
is only in its first chapter, and much hard work
lies ahead before another Mendel can create a
system adequate for the problems which confront
us, many of which we now merely avoid.
All of life in its origin, growth, and hereditary
mechanisms seems to revolve about the self-dupli-
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cating molecules, the proteins and the nucleic acids.
These extraordinary chemical compounds, which
can produce replicas of themselves out of the build-
ing blocks of their environment, lie at the heart of
the great mysteries of life. A full understanding
and a capability for adequate manipulation in this
field call for a new type of chemistry which can
deal with molecules of an atomic weight of a mil-
lion, for a new type of special thinking, and for
new aids to thinking. Some powerful aids are
already available, in tracer techniques, chroma-
tography, electronic instruments. Recently there
has been a striking step forward, for Crick and
Watson have presented a logical explanation of the
mechanism by which a nucleic acid can form
duplicates of itself in an appropriate medium.
Soon we may begin to understand and imitate the
formation of the proteins which are vital to us in
such an intimate sense.
Biochemistry is making progress on many
fronts. The chemistry of muscle becomes more
clear. Hormones have been isolated and syn-
thesized. The vitamins, then the enzymes, lead us
toward an understanding of catalysis which reaches
far beyond combination on a crystal surface.
Photosynthesis yields very slowly to attack, but
chloroplasts can now be caused to function in
vitro ; and we may soon be able to isolate chloro-
phyll itself without altering its form and associa-
tion in the living cell, surround it with an ap-
propriate set of pigments to interchange the energy
of incident photons, and cause it to fix carbon
dioxide in a test tube. It is strange that this
particular chemical compound, which is central to
life on the earth, which appears throughout the
plant kingdom in closely allied forms, which evolu-
tion provided as the means for seizing and using
the sun's energy, resists so long our attempts to
watch it work in an artificial environment.
We have long cultivated living tissue in glass
bottles ; and recently the cultivation of viruses on
such tissue has opened up important vistas in the
attack on disease. We have proceeded far in the
subtle electrochemistry of nerve action. But our
distant view of brain action, through encephalog-
raphy, is very far from providing means for more
than a glimmer of understanding of the mecha-
nisms of the brain. Medicine is still largely em-
pirical in spite of scientific progress in biochemistry
and physiology ; it has new and powerful tools
but understands ana controls them only vaguely ;
and its progress toward logical processes, based
on sound, far-reaching hypotheses, is slow be-
cause of the appalling complexity of its subject
matter. Biochemistry is in its infancy-an ex-
ceedingly attractive field for men of courage and
fertile minds. This is true also of psychology.
And where these meet to attempt an attack upon
the brain processes of man, there is a situation
comparable to that in evolution before Darwin ;
many of the essential notions have been or are
being excavated ; but the critical exciting syn-
theses all still lie ahead.
These are only a few sample areas. Science is
expanding exponentially, limited now by the men-
tal capacity it can attract, but threatened also with
limitation in other ways, as indeed is all free
thought. The evolution of science has some paral-
lels with organic evolution. It is a radiating
evolution, producing new species of science almost
daily. There is intense specialization to fill niches
in the environment. Certain species have spe-
cialized to the point where they have lost contact
with the main thread-perhaps have lost their
capacity for adaptation. Areas have been occupied
in which traditional scientific methods really do
not apply, where mutation has not yet produced
adequate substitutes, and where natural selection
acts but lamely.
Civilization generally, science in particular, pro-
ceeds because man can store, transmit, and consult
the record ; because the experience of one genera-
tion is available to the next ; because an individual
can share the knowledge of his neighbor. There
has been great progress in transmission, in com-
munication, with telephone, radio, facsimile trans-
mission, television ; but this has thus far touched
scholarly affairs only lightly. There is progress
too in the storing of the record, with microfilm
and new methods of printing. But our methods
of consulting the record are archaic and essentially
unchanged. The library, as we know it, cannot
cope with the task before it. Science may become
bogged down in its own product, inhibited like a
colony of bacteria by its own exudations. There
are thousands of journals in physics alone. One
of these publishes five thousand pages a year,
mathematical, abstruse, difficult. Who can be
familiar with it all, and who can find in the great
mass in storage the grain of wheat needed for his
next step? The pile is mounting daily, science is
becoming polyglot, duplication is rife ; synthesis,
crossing many fields, becomes increasingly dif-
ficult and more and more necessary.
As we look over the whole scene of modern
science, the impending difficulty is everywhere ap-
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VOL. 98, NO. 4, 1954] SCIENTIFIC MOTIVATION
parent. We look at any remote, rapidly expand- or subject to precise formulation. There is every
ing field, say the chemistry and energetics of reason why he should do so and should turn over
photosynthesis; and there are hundreds of able to the machine all similar parts of the job of re-
research men and thousands of publications. The cording and consulting his scientific record. In
key thoughts are necessarily expressed in language fact he must do so if he is to handle at all the
which it would take years to master. An individ- mass of data he is creating and proceed into the
ual can now make an advance of such moment that maze of complexity which every branch of science
it would have excited the entire intellectual com- promises to become in the days just ahead. But
munity in the days when science was simple ; but the developing of such machines is now everyone's
the advance becomes known only in an intimate business in general and no one's business in par-
circle and is grossly distorted when it is described ticular. It requires a major effort over many
outside the circle. The esteem of colleagues, the years and great facilities and support. The cod-
recognition by men of understanding, which is dear ing of existing material presents a barrier to
to those whose lives are devoted to unraveling progress which has thus far dismayed those who
our common mysteries, becomes severely circum- might otherwise have plunged in to attack the
scribed. The great awards become artificial and difficulty broadly. So we nibble about the edges,
of doubtful value when there are dozens of accom- and the main central bulky problem remains al-
plishments daily, and the truly admirable advances most wholly untouched. It is not a job for genius,
are often beyond the comprehension of laymen. for pulling rabbits out of hats, but for years of
In such a morass how are the great syntheses of effort by diverse groups that have varied tech-
the future to be brought to light? niques at their finger tips. Of course the prob-
There are a number of things that can be done lem will ultimately be solved if we proceed down
about it. Aids to man's thinking have proceeded the road of mechanization and do not get involved
far beyond pencil and paper. Analytical ma- in atomic war; but science will probably go deeper
chines are evolving rapidly. Digital machinery, into the morass of extensive, uncorrelated, essen-
at the moment, holds the center of the stage with tially unavailable product, before it emerges.
analogue machines in the background. Yet one It appears that science needs new methods as
can conceive an analogue machine which could it approaches problems which reach beyond the
handle the routine of organic chemistry far better simple relations on which much of its present suc-
than a man can do. It could have a far more ex- cess has been built. These methods will involve
tensive and accurate memory. It could manipu- new ways of storing and consulting the record, no
late relationships far more rapidly and with greater doubt. But they will involve also new patterns
and more accurate restraints than a human brain. of collaboration where several highly specialized
It could even learn by experience if necessary, disciplines, beyond true mastery by any one in-
like Shannon's mechanical mouse, which blunders dividual, are essential for full insight. Civiliza-
through a maze by trial and error the first time tion began when an individual could approach a
it is inserted, but the second time proceeds un- problem bolstered by the inheritance of a written
erringly to the exit, thus showing much better record and sharing experience with his fellows.
learning capacity than the mouse produced by We can proceed effectively on many of the paths
evolution. Machines for proceeding from an x-ray now open only when we learn to interrelate the
spectrograph to the parameters of a crystal still thought patterns of allied minds with far more
need human intervention to supply missing phase intimacy than is now furnished by books, lec-
relations, but they may be freed of this disability tures, or seminars. As this occurs the ways in
and become powerful instruments indeed. There which a scientist will proceed about his business,
are rapid selectors, which can examine a thousand the ways in which youth will be trained, the posi-
items a second and print out the text of the items tion of science in society, will be altered greatly.
selected in accordance with a complex code. It Why do we pursue science at all? What are
is possible, on paper at least, to build a machine the motivations of scientists? It is well to ex-
which will proceed from item to item by principles amine these from time to time, but especially so
of association, as does the brain, without relying as we attempt to consider the trends and the ways
on pyramidal indexing. There is no reason why in which scientists may be called upon to work
man should not relegate to the machine all those together in new relationships.
parts of his thought processes which are repetitive Much of the motivation is clear and immediate.
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We need not consider applied science, conducted
for commercial or military reasons. Nor do we
need to consider basic science pursued because it
may later contribute to profitable applications.
There are more important categories. One is the
research aimed at bettering man's lot, without
thought of gain : the attack on disease, or ignor-
ance, or overpopulation. Here the immediate ob-
jective is clear, though the underlying motivation
is usually unexpressed. But there is a category
of research that has no relation to material ad-
vantage ; it is fundamental science, directed merely
at the extension of man's understanding of him-
self or his environment, or at the extension of his
ability to understand.
The motivation behind much of this kind of
scientific inquiry is, no doubt, mere curiosity-
that strange characteristic of man which, more
than anything else, has led to his ascendancy on
our planet, and which drives him still toward the
mastery of what may now seem the unknowable.
Joined to curiosity, and responsible for some of
the most amazing flights of genius, is the same
aesthetic urge that leads to great art and music.
This is peculiarly the case with respect to some
of the more abstruse developments in the fields of
astronomy, physics, and mathematics. And many
scientists derive their strongest motivation, in one
way or another, from religion and carry on their
mission by faith.
The question of motivation has been examined
since science began ; every mature scientist has
answered it for himself long ago and requires no
elucidation of it from me. But there is a reason
why it should, from time to time, be considered
anew. The number of youth entering on a career
in science today is great, and the interest of the
public at large in the work of scientists has grown
enormously. What do we say to the young man
who is immersed in science, with his whole life
wrapped up in it? The new things that he must
master, if he will advance with his fellows beyond
superficiality to creative activity in a specialized
field, are so numerous and difficult that he has
little time to spend on the philosophical thinking
of the past. He is prone to acquire his philo-
sophical orientation accidentally or casually from
his scientific teachers, and in doing so he may
easily be misled. For I fear that some of the
things that are told him in this respect by scien-
tists are erroneous, logically unsound ; yet they
are likely to be accepted by him just because they
appear in scientific dress.
Science has been enormously successful in its
representation of reality. Many subjects, once
thought to be beyond its purview, have finally
yielded to its attack. It normally recognizes, as
it proceeds, that there are things it will never
know, things that lie permanently beyond the weak
sense of man, however extended by instruments.
Yet its scope is the whole panorama of the physical
universe and all physical aspects of. organic life
on earth ; and these vast areas of knowledge, it is
confident, will one day be subjected to its dominion.
And out of this confidence, too vaguely defined,
there sometimes grows a degree of scientific ar-
rogance. Scientists forget momentarily the limits
which science initially set for itself.
Let us consider a presentation that is being
made today very forcefully and convincingly.
There is nothing fundamentally new about it, for
the same presentation appears throughout the his-
tory of human thought ; but it now acquires a com-
pleteness and elaboration which is highly attrac-
tive to those who think logically, or believe they
do. In substance the presentation goes as follows :
We find ourselves in a mechanistic universe,
riding on a fragment from a primeval explosion,
projected into nothingness, destined to plunge
through space for a while, and then to cool to
utter inertness. On this fragment evolution has
occurred, an entirely mechanistic evolution from
the chance appearance of reproducing molecules,
through a myriad of species, sorted out by natural
selection, to the appearance of man. Now man,
the highest animal, is destined to ride for a while
and then perish. There may be millions of other
fragments, with organic life on them, sentient
beings, conscious of their presence in a role not
of their own choosing, riding also to their deaths.
We need not quarrel with this presentation so
far. Its formulation is one of the tasks of science.
In it science confines itself strictly to the things
that can be measured and recorded. It carefully
skirts all questions that are not answerable by
its methodology.
But from this presentation of the mechanistic
universe some recent writers have gone on to
formulate a code of ethics as though it followed
in logical consequence. This code, in summary,
is very simple. Man controls his destiny; let him
so control it as to build for himself a better life.
That is good which leads in this direction. The
code is laudable enough as far as it goes ; but it is
incomplete and without a logical base in the facts
from which it purports to be derived. For it is
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VOL. 98, NO. 4, 1954] SCIENTIFIC MOTIVATION 231
based on a tacit assumption that the mechanistic worthy of our best efforts. It may enable a little
account of the universe that has been constructed child to be happy and healthy and to avoid the
within the accepted limitations of science is in fact mental distortions which produce distress. In it
a complete account, and a proper basis on which there will be music and art and a flowering of those
to build a complete ethical code. This is to assert attributes of the race which somehow transcend
that there is no reality beyond those things which the dull problems of food and shelter. In it man
we can measure with a rule or time by a clock and may develop his individuality and rise to true
that value can be deduced from a statement of dignity. Let us so build that our children may
fact. But man's motivations emerge from his lead better lives. Our code will be a simple one :
entire experience. The seat of ethics is in our that is good which leads toward this consumma-
hearts, not in our minds. Our ignorance is vast. tion.
At every turn, as we reach the boundaries beyond It is dangerous, however, to regard such a code
which strict definition and logic, measurement and as logically derived from our scientific attain-
manipulation, cannot be applied, we are confronted ment. The same logic and the same attainment
with mystery. Our little minds have carved out could equally well support a far different concep-
a region within which science has proved a guide tion of what is good. It does support motivations
through the murk, leaving blanks and emptiness, today which are in stark contrast with those by
but building a consistent conception. In the few which we wish to live. Logic alone can lead one
thousand years of our existence the logical powers toward a code which subordinates all means to
of the mind have accomplished a synthesis in their end, means of cruelty and deception to an
which we can take pride. But to imply that we end of regimentation where the free spirit is at
now grasp the sorry world entire, that we can the mercy of a communistic state. The urge to
now draw final conclusions, is to mistake a first serve one's fellow man is not based on any scien-
step for a journey. We have a useful formula- tific dogma, and the attempt to give it scientific
tion, within its realm, but have thus far proved justification involves a dangerous fallacy. The
little on which to judge our duty or our mission. urge is based upon a deep-seated aspiration of the
Yet there must be motivations for the moment ; race, which is its only hope.
we cannot wait until our children perhaps lift the The simple creed of service set forth above suf-
edge of the veil a bit, in order to orient our lives fices for the day's work for many a scientist. Yet
today. Thus there is no fault to find with those there is joined with it a deep conviction, a faith
who go no further than to consider : here we are ; if you will, which for many a man furnishes mo-
let us build a better world-provided this is stated tivation and satisfaction, entirely apart from the
merely as a working formula. Upon such a current struggle. This is the conviction that it
simple formula, joined with an equally simple is good for man to know, that striving for under-
definition of what would be a better world, can be standing is his mission. We are embarked upon
erected an acceptable code of ethics. Such a code a great adventure, and it is our privilege to further
has been erected by a large portion of those who it. Even though at times the box that is opened
work in science. It is at times as fine a code as be Pandora's, even though there is both good and
any that has been adhered to by serious men to evil in what we learn, it is our duty and our calling
guide their lives. to extend man's grasp of the universe in which he
Within limits man now controls his destiny. lives, and of himself. By this process, of begin-
True, the processes of evolution are still effective,
and man's control is as yet feeble. True, he can ning to understand, we have made such progress
merely deflect a bit the powerful forces of mecha- as we have. Though the path be thorny, this is
nism and chance which rule his life. But his still the way in which we should proceed if we
power is growing, and can be consciously en- would finally emerge from darkness and strike into
hanced. By this power let us build a world in the light. For who can tell what we may yet
which men may live happily. Let us conquer dis- learn? Are we now so wise that we can see the
ease and banish the causes which distort men's picture whole? A million years is a long time,
minds. Let us end war and the pressure of popu- and it was only yesterday that we embarked upon
lation upon the means of existence, which is one the great adventure. Who are we to conclude that
of its causes. The construction of an environ- those things which may be today expressed in ergs
ment in which there is peace and harmony is or quanta encompass all that we shall ever grasp?
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The concrete convictions from experiment have
seldom lasted more than a generation or a cen-
tury. The gap between the now knowable and
unknowable is vast, and the borderline may shift
in unexpected ways. We may still learn many
things, and our immature science is no rock on
which to erect a final structure for man's ethical
guidance.
Thus, as we build codes, even simple codes for
the ordering of the work of the day, we need to
supplement and extend, to incorporate the scien-
tific faith that the extension of knowledge is a
good in itself. If we build well, our children's
children may lead happy lives. That alone, yes, is
worthy of our best. They may lead lives of har-
mony, and mutual respect, and diversity, such as
we can only dream of. But they may increase in
understanding. They may be wise. Their grasp
may include mysteries which now elude us, even
some of those which we now believe to be forever
beyond our ken. We would build for them. We
would build not only so that they may live the
good life ; not only so that man may develop to the
full extent of his organic potentialities; but we
would build so that our sons may penetrate the
gloom a bit, may increase in wisdom and under-
standing, and perhaps even begin to realize what
the great adventure is all about.
Here is a key to a motivation and code that we
can in all honesty place before youth. To those
young scientists who derive their motivation from
their religion we do not need, as scientists, to
speak. To those who have lost this anchor, some-
times through the very intensity of their devotion
to science, we would offer a motivation that is
worthy of their best efforts. When we lean upon
the simple faith that it is man's mission to learn to
understand, there is no place for a fatalism, for
an urge to live in comfort and enjoy, for tomorrow
we die. There is no true logic in codes that
would submerge and regiment and destroy man's
spirit. We wish to so act that those who follow
may be healthy men, unharassed, in decent and
dignified relationships, free and individual, and
to develop the powers of the mind to the utmost.
This is our definition of the "better" though not
of the ultimate good, and it is not subject to dis-
tortion for the enslavement of man's spirit. The
definition does not flow from logic but from faith,
even from the simple faith which is exemplified by
our own devotion to the advance of science. If
we build well our children may indeed think more
deeply and more surely.
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