The Role of Science

Oscar B. Johannsen

[Reprinted from The Gargoyle, April, 1961]

Because of the brilliant scientific and technological achievements of the past few decades, a certain degree of cleavage is arising between the scientists and the mass of the people. Whereas at one time people looked with skepticism mixed with a little scorn, though possibly tinged with some fear on scientists puttering around in their laboratories, today they appear to look upon them as though they were gods. If any problem arises the people almost instinctively feel that the scientists can solve it. This near veneration is mixed with an indefinable feeling of fear, that fear which besets all when confronted by something which is not understood. And the people do not understand science.

If they did they would realize that scientists are not gods. They are men just like the rest of us. Most of them are routine investigators who merely refine the knowledge which has been discovered. Only occasionally does an Einstein arise with a revolutionary concept of Nature which results in mankind taking a drastically new turn.

Paradoxically, today, when so many look upon science as the cause of many of our problems, as the atom bomb, and also as the means of solving these problems, actually the real causes and solutions of our problems lie in the domain of economics and morality. Surprisingly, an atomic scientist, Dr. Polykarp Kusch, winner of the Nobel prize for physics in 1955, brought this out. He said "the crucial issues of this age are not strongly related to the discovery of new scientific knowledge and the elaboration of new techniques; rather they relate most importantly to having man become attunded to a world that is heavily conditioned by science and technology. …Science cannot do a very large number of things and to assume that science may find a technical solution to all problems is the road to disaster.

The problems facing man are ethical ones and science cannot give answers to those problems. It may help but that is about all. Dr. Kusch said "science, in itself, is not the source of the ethical standards, the moral insight, the wisdom that is needed to make value-judgments; though it is an important ingredient in the making of value-judgments. Social, political and military decisions are made on grounds other than those in which science is authoritative."

And these problems which face the people must be solved by the people. They cannot let the so-called experts solve them. Without realizing it, men people look to the "experts" to solve the great social and economic problems, they are, in effect, adopting the statist concept. They are adopting the belief that they should be told what to do. When they do that they lose their freedom, they 1ose their dignity, and their problems become worse instead of better. Dr. Kusch says "an appalling number of citizens believe that it is up to the scientist to make the judgment, as though he had an especially valid set of values. This leads to an abdication of the right and the responsibility of every mail to participate in the forming the fabric of his society."

To those suffering from the delusion that science will bring utopia Dr. Kusch says "I am quite certain that the mass of men believe that the better world of tomorrow will come through science. I think that the belief ought to be publicly combated. ...You would all agree that the technical excellence of television does not guarantee that it will enrich life to say nothing of demeaning it. ...The point that science alone will not create the good life should be endlessly explored by the press."

The problems today really are the problems which have always been present in man's history -- economic and moral. The fundamental one is how to divide the unequal opportunities of the earth among the equal claimants to those opportunities with justice to all. That is an economic and a moral problem. To the extent that science can help focus man's attention on this problem, to that extent it can be of assistance. But it can never, itself, solve the problem. Henry George recognized that the crucial problem was this one of the just division of the earth's opportunities and warned that unless it was solved, the great civilization we had built would go the way all previous civilizations have gone.

So, our job today is to keep pounding away constantly day after day on this problem and its solution, the broad outlines of which are contained in Henry George's works. This is the really great work of man and those who enlist in it, though they gain nothing material, will have the satisfaction of knowing that they are striving to bring to the world light on this fundamental task which the Almighty gave to man in return for giving him a portion of His Divinity.