It is an honor-and I do not mean that in a platitudinous or gratuitous way-to participate in this ceremony honoring the Fellows. My feelings about this event are best illustrated in a fantasy about Socrates. As I read the papers of the Fellows, I imagined that rather than present a lecture, I would take a walk with the Fellows in the gardens of the National Academy of Sciences. During that walk, I would discuss with the Fellows three great questions. The first question would be: "What strategies must we develop to assist democracy in its campaign not to be devoured by capitalism?" I imagined that the Fellows and I would walk around the garden and debate the answer. After considering that issue, I would raise the second question: "What research can we do to ensure that the interests of the collective are not overruled by the interests of the individual in our society, or in the next century?" After walking around and examining that one, we would get to the final, and perhaps toughest of all questions for the 21st century: "How do we ensure that children remain attached to concrete reality and are not seduced deeper and deeper into the realms of virtual reality?" If we lose children to virtual reality, then the interests of the collective are going to be overruled, and the possibilities for democracy in the 21st century will also be severely undermined.
The Ford Foundation and the Foundation for Child Development have taken a very important step by connecting young, mid-career scholars with the National Academy of Sciences and with its principles and mission. It is important for us to remember that our field of research, i.e., the social and behavioral sciences, is relatively new in world history. It has not been around for centuries like astronomy, physics, and chemistry. At this point, we do not have scientists of the stature of Galileo, Lavoisier, or Darwin to emulate. We also do not have a Nobel Prize in our discipline. But might there be a Nobel Prize for social and behavioral sciences in the 21st century? It is interesting to speculate that possibility. Curiously, there is a Nobel Prize for economics and apparently some interest within the Nobel Committee to broaden that prize to include the work of other