Science is not enough

✍ Scribed by J.K. Finch

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1952
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 690 KB
• Volume: 253
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/0016-0032(52)90495-x

✦ Synopsis

While, on the one hand, we are frequently warned that we are experiencing a "cultural lag" because science and technology (we really mean industrial progress) has progressed far more rapidly than our abilities to assimilate its contributions in our social life, there is, at the same time, a wide-spread realization of the dominating role which engineering and engineered industry have come to play in the advance of modern civilization. Our progress in peace and our strength in war are dependent upon our continued technological and industrial leadership. Indeed such progress is not simply desirable, it is essential if our civilization is to survive in this modern world. It is as if some new evolutionary force has come into the life of man, and, whether we believe it to be good or evil, it inescapably impels us forward--it has a grip on humanity which we cannot relax, which we must, in fact, continue to further and develop.

Certainly in this picture of man in the hand of God, or fate, or inescapable destiny--as you will--the role of science in engineering plays a major part. Yet here we find not only popular misunderstandings but viewpoints and policies stemming from these erroneous ideas which threaten our continued leadership both in engineering and in science, a leadership so vital to the survival of Western man.