February 1953 - Linus Pauling Day-by-Day

THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN AN IDEAL WORLD

By Linus Pauling

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I shall begin my discussion tonight of the place of science in an ideal world by mentioning first the part that science has played in bringing the world to its present state, and next the place of science in the world today.

Science is knowledge: knowledge of principles or facts. More specifically, it is the accumulated and accepted knowledge which has been systematized and formulated with reference to the discovery of general proofs and the operation of general laws. This definition is so broad as to include almost everything - all of the activities of man as a rational animal.

I myself am a scientist in a more restricted sense - a natural scientist, a man interested in the physical and biological world and its phenomena. The body of knowledge comprised in natural science - physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, biology, etc. - is very great. Knowledge in this field is characterized by its precision, and by the fact that it is accepted by all or nearly all of the people interested in the field. To the extent that economics, political science, and other social sciences have developed a precise and accepted body of knowledge, I shall include them in science in my discussion this evening.

Technology is the application of science to the world's work, to the satisfaction of the needs of the people of the world. Technology is included within science.

It is the scientists among human beings - not the emperors, not the generals, not the politicians - who have made the world what it is today, who are responsible for our present civilization. There is no evidence that 20th-century man himself differs very much in his physical and mental structure and capabilities from his stone-age ancestor of 10,000 or even 100,000 years ago. Modern man differs from stone-age man in his knowledge - in his scientific development. Stone-age man developed from primitive man when some early scientists learned how to make tools by chipping stones into suitable shapes. Another great scientific discovery of many thousands of years ago was the discovery of the use and control of fire. Then came the discovery of agriculture, about 8000 years ago, the discovery of bronze, and the discovery of iron. The impact of these great discoveries on the world is indicated by the selection of the names of the successive stages of development of civilized man - the stone-age, the bronze age, the iron age; and now, in very recent times, the age of steam, the age of electricity, the age of nuclear energy.

It was the work, the discoveries of Robert Boyle, Lavoisier, Gay-Lussac, James Watt, and other scientists and inventors of 300 or 200 years ago that ushered the world into the modern period of technological development, through the introduction of machinery powered by steam. It was the work, the scientific discoveries of Benjamin Franklin, Oersted, Ampere, Davy, Faraday, and many other scientists of a century and a half or a century ago that brought in the age of electricity and chemistry. The last fifty years has seen the transition to the nuclear age, through the efforts of hundreds of scientists, including such great ones as Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr.

My colleague, Professor Fred Hoyle, British astrophysicist from the University of Cambridge, who is now lecturing at the California Institute of Technology, has emphasized that the striving of one community against another, the adoption of particular social organizations by different communities, and the waging of wars are factors that have been unimportant in the development of civilization; that the important activities of man, the activities that have determined the course of change in the world, have been the scientific and technological discoveries.

The ever-increasing rate of change of the world makes it difficult to attempt to predict the future. In the early days of the development of man discoveries were made only after periods of thousands of years, and changes in the nature of the world were correspondingly slow. During the last few hundred years there have been more and more important discoveries, coming more and more rapidly. The discoveries themselves have given rise to problems which must be solved. The great problems that must be solved are the social and political ones - the problems of devastating war, of mass starvation, of oppression of minorities, of violation of human rights.

It is true that the solution of these problems by the people of the world requires the acceptance of a doctrine of values, of a dominant cohesive belief. I think that such a dominant cohesive belief has been provided by a scientist and Unitarian, Joseph Priestley, who, 150 years ago, supported the doctrine that has been expressed by Jeremy Bentham in the words "The object of all law is the greatest happiness of the greatest number."

If we accept this doctrine we must conclude that there should be many more scientists in the world. 1. Many people who are not scientists would like to be scientists and have the ability to be scientists. In an ideal world as many people as possible will work at jobs that they like. 2. The world would benefit in practical ways, through application of their discoveries. 3. Scientists would help the world through application of the scientific method to the complex problems of society. I shall discuss the questions, beginning with the last.

Let me say first that I know that there is a difference of opinion among laymen and also among scientists as to the extent to which scientists can contribute to the solution of the problems of social science, politics, and international relations. I myself believe that scientists - for example, people who have learned how to solve problems in fields of physics, chemistry, and biology - can make significant contributions to the solution of the very complex problems in these other fields. There are many scientists who, with unusual native ability to begin with, have learned how to grasp the facts of a complicated system, and to search for original and unusual methods of solution of the problems presented by the behavior of this system. There are some natural scientists who have successfully shifted into the social sciences. An example is Professor Leo Szilard, a physicist and physical chemist, who is now professor of social science at the University of Chicago. Another example is Michael Polanyi, who, after a very successful career as a physical chemist, resigned his position as professor of physical chemistry and the University of Manchester, England, half a dozen years ago, and was immediately appointed professor of social science in the same university. His is the man who was refused a visa.

It is, of course, sometimes said that natural scientists do not recognize sufficiently the great complexity of the problems in another field. I myself was recently described as naive in my expressions of opinion on social and political questions. I think that the description was supposed to be uncomplimentary, but I do not consider it to be so. I have looked up the definition of the word naive in Webster's dictionary, and I find that it means characterized by native simplicity and unaffectedness; unaffectedly natural; free from reserve, disguise, equivocation and dissimulation; open; frank; candid. It may well be that politicians are not naive - are not free from reserve, disguise, equivocation, and dissimulation; I myself think that it is good that some people who are free from equivocation express themselves in important social and political questions.

Wars may in the past have had little permanent influence on the long-term course of the world's history, as pointed out by Hoyle. There is no doubt, however, that war is a major method of contributing to the unhappiness of very many people. War is evil. If the world is to be changed for the better, war must be eliminated. I believe that scientists, through the application of the scientific method to the problem of the causes of war, can solve this great problem.

Moreover, we must also recognize that the nature of war has been changing during recent centuries. Hoyle's thesis that wars are unimportant factors in determining the long-term history of the world may not be valid in the future. Wars in the past have killed only a rather small fraction of the people on the earth - only about 20 million people were killed in the first world war, about 80 million in the second world war. The introduction of nuclear weapons leads us to fear, however, that a third world war would be far more devastating than the second.

Experience has shown that an atomic bomb detonated over a city may kill 100,000 people - perhaps the newer models could be expected to kill two or three times this number.

There seems to be little doubt that hydrogen bombs would be used in a third world war. Senator James H. Duff said about two weeks ago that one of these bombs would be thousands of times stronger than an ordinary atom bomb, an equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT. A single bomb of this sort detonated over a city such as New York, Chicago, Moscow, London, Paris, could kill millions of people. The world might be lucky to get through a third world war with casualties fewer than some hundreds of million.

Senator Duff also stated that if this explosive were put in a cobalt shell and exploded, it would kill every living thing within thousands of miles. A detailed analysis of the problem of killing all life on the earth, through the radioactivity of cobalt 60 isotope produced by interaction of the neutrons from a hydrogen bomb with cobalt 59 atoms, was made by an atomic physicist a year or so ago, and published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He concluded that this job could be done for an expenditure of about 20 billion dollars. It does not seem to be a rational activity of man, but man - a political man - has not always shown himself to be rational.

There is another point that I shall mention about the hydrogen bomb - that it represents a scandalous waste of our natural resources. We have a supply of natural resources - sources of energy, of metals and other substances - that may be exhausted. Through the work of Einstein, Bohr, Carl Anderson, Urey, Chadwick, Fermi, Joliot-Curie, Hahn and other scientists a great supply of energy has been made available, by the fission of uranium and thorium. This energy can be used for peace-time purposes, if it is not wasted - even the plutonium of atomic bombs, if war is ultimately averted.

But not the tritium of hydrogen bombs, if they are stored for a long time. Uranium is used up in making the hydrogen bombs. The tritium decays - half is gone in 12.5 years. We cannot simply store hydrogen bombs to prepare for war - every 12.5 years half the supply must be replenished, using up more of the world's irreplaceable store of uranium. War itself and preparation for war is terribly wasteful - preparation for war with hydrogen bombs is especially wasteful of our precious natural resources.

Eugene Holman, President of Standard Oil of New Jersey, in the June 1952 Atlantic Monthly said, in an article "Our Inexhaustible Resources," that we should go ahead and exhaust our natural resources as fast as we can, because scientists in recent years have found new resources as fast as the old ones were exhausted. To the extent that he presents arguments, I have not been able to follow them; to me it seems that he says essentially that we should follow the profligate policy of waste of our natural resources because so far we have not got into any great trouble.

Now let me return to the problem of averting a devastating third world war.

The problem of war can be solved, if it is attacked vigorously. I am confident that clear-thinking men - specialists, scientists of all sorts - could solve this problem. I believe that there should be set up in the world, perhaps under the United Nations, a great department of investigation of the causes of war and methods of preventing wars.

In a sense the United Nations is itself such an organization, but it is too largely political. It is true that UNESCO, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and other branches of the United Nations are working well and effectively to prevent war. We may feel much satisfaction that there has been such great progress as has been achieved during the past 50 years. The first steps toward concerted action in achieving world peace were made in 1899 and 1907, when the two Hague Conferences were held. These were the first democratic assemblies of independent states in the effort to create a continuous international system. At the Hague Conferences war was accepted as natural, and the only effort made was an attempt to decrease its inhumanity. Then came the League of Nations, in 1919, and the effort to avert wars. In 1945, only 26 years later, the United Nations was set up, with a charter that forbids war, and with the purpose of preventing war by dealing with the causes of war. The improvement in the world attitude toward war has been so great in the small space of time of 50 years that we may have a real hope that war will be abolished from the earth, and that the age of atomic weapons will come to a peaceful end.

But the transcendental importance of the problem of averting a third world war justifies far greater effort than is being expended at present; in particular an intensive scientific attack should be made on the problem, on a greatly increased scale. I propose that there be set up a great international department, in the United Nations, for a scientific attack on this problem, and that there also be other, independent groups, set up by the United States and other nations. Thousands of scientists could be brought into this work - natural scientists, original thinkers of all sorts, as well as professional social scientists. I would hope that many billions of dollars each year would be allocated to putting into effect the recommendations made by these researchers. My proposal is in one sense similar to that made a half a dozen years ago by Henry Wallace, and also, the following year, by Senator McMahon. These men suggested that a sum of money of about 15 billion dollars per year in the budget of the United States be allocated to the purpose of raising the standards of living and the technological conditions in distressed countries throughout the world, in averting famine, and in other ways attempting to remove the cause of the international friction and personal unhappiness that lead to war. Now that our budget for military activities has doubled or tripled it would be justified, I think, to consider the allocation of a still larger sum to this purpose. It might, for example, be possible for the United States and Russia, with the collaboration also of England, France, and other countries, to reach through treaty an agreement immediately to limit military expenditures, to perhaps half the present level in each country, and to allocate the sum of money saved in this way to the activities for the prevention of war. I shall not attempt to present a detailed plan here - it is part of my suggestion, in fact, that the detailed plans be made not by a few people, whose knowledge is necessarily limited, but by a great group of specialists, including many of the most able and original scientists in the world.

The problem of starvation and malnutrition of many millions of people is one that must be solved. The World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations are attacking this problem in a more effective way than it has ever been attacked before. One situation that can be avoided by rational consideration is that of widespread starvation and malnutrition in one country or region at the same time that great stores of food remain unsold somewhere else in the world. Even when the problem of satisfactory distribution is solved, however, there remains the problem of limited agricultural production. There are great opportunities for increasing the agricultural production of the world through the application of present knowledge and through new discoveries.

Let me mention one example of a specific discovery and its practical consequences. Some 40 years ago Professor Shull, of Princeton University, building of course on the work of other scientists, discovered that grains of corn from a hybrid corn plant, produced by crossing two varieties of corn, gave, when planted, a greatly increased yield - as much as 50 percent increase. The crossing has to be repeated each year, in order to obtain seeds for planting. At the present time most of the corn produced in the United States is hybrid corn. It has been estimated that the increased wealth of the United States as a result of this one scientific discovery is 2 billion dollars per year - roughly a 1 percent increase in the income of every person in the United States. The value to the Nation of this one discovery is more than enough to pay for all of the fundamental scientific work now being done. There is not doubt that other basic discoveries of equal significance remain to be made.

We all know that medical progress has been very great during the last 50 years, as a result of new scientific discoveries, - the discovery of x-rays, of the sulfa drugs, of penicillin, of streptomycin and other antibiotics, of antisera for inoculation against disease, including BCG for tuberculosis. Continued medical research can lead to very significant increase in the happiness and well-being of the people of the world. The President's Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation reported last month that the total expenditures in the United States for medical research in 1952 amounted to only 180 million dollars. This is only 3 tenths of 1 percent of the expenditures for military purposes. It is less than the amount spent on monuments and tombstones. It is not much greater than the amount spent on chlorophyll, which is now a 100-million-dollar business. Chlorophyll is a fraud - it is the advertising man's contribution to medicine, rather than the scientist's. There is practically no supporting evidence for the use of chlorophyll in toothpastes, pills to keep you smelling good, and other drug-store items; the chlorophyll seems to do nothing except to make the substance green, and to suggest to the purchaser, who has the vague idea that chlorophyll in the leaves of the trees is nature's purifier of the air, that he ought to purchase the product.

When we consider possible advances in medicine - control of heart disease, cancer, arthritis, colds - we concluded that the Nation and the world would benefit in every way if there were twice as many scientists working on medical research as at the present time.

Let me mention the possibilities in the field of mental disease. There are about 7 million people in the United States suffering from mental disease. I think that we may make the reasonable prediction that extended scientific research on the problem of the nature of cerebral activity, the structure of the brain and nervous system, and the cause of mental disease could in a generation or two lead to discoveries that would permit the prevention of disease in one million of these people, and their retention or rehabilitation as useful, productive citizens. If we assign the low figure $2000 to the loss in income of the Nation per year per patient, the gain to the Nation each year would amount of 2 billion dollars. This is 10 times the sum now being expended on medical research of all sorts, probably 100 times the amount being expended on research reasonably closely related to mental disease. I suggest that it would be rational to increase the support of scientists in the field of medical research, including the basic sciences, at the greatest rate permitted by the facilities for discovering and educating young scientists.

An indication of possible future developments in medicine may be given by our work on sickle-cell anemia

We may ask what would be rights and obligations of scientists in an ideal world. Their obligations would be to make their contribution - to do their work. Their rights would, I think, be essentially those that are contained now within the principle of academic freedom for university professors. Here we must distinguish between fundamental scientists and applied scientists. The latter are workmen who attack the problem of the application of scientific discoveries to practical uses, in accordance with decisions made by some planners - a board of directors of a commercial firm, a government agency, a United Nations agency, etc. Practical science, developmental work of this sort, can be planned, and then should be executed according to the plans.

The situation of a university professor who is carrying on research is much different. He is trying to make the discoveries that cannot be foreseen. The professor of theoretical physics in a great university should know more about the subject than anyone else in the world, except perhaps the equivalent professors in other universities. There is nobody who can tell him how to carry on his work, how to make discoveries in his field. The principles of academic freedom were developed in the European universities during the last 700 years in recognition of this fact. Someone must, of course, decide as to who will be given appointment as professor. Once he is appointed, he must be free to make his own decisions, if the world is to progress. He must be able to consult with other scientists, to travel, to search for the truth in the way that seems to him best - for no one else knows what road he should follow in order to find the truth.

I feel strongly that an understanding of and appreciation of science can contribute significantly to the happiness of nearly everyone, through the personal satisfaction and pleasure that accompany pure knowledge and understanding. Not only should there be many scientific investigators; there should also be many scientists who help to describe scientific developments to citizens as a whole. Our knowledge of the world at the present time is astounding in its extent. We know something abut the structure of particles a million millionth of an inch in diameter - the nuclei of atoms, and something about the nature of objects 10²⁷ centimeters away. Only a half a dozen years ago a method was discovered for determining how old a carbonaceous material is; the last ice age ended only 10,000 years ago; that now we have found that Mount Mazama, in Oregon, exploded to give Crater Lake just 6200 years ago; and that an earlier volcanic explosion in Oregon which covered over a cave containing on rock shelves rows of woven grass sandals occurred 9200 years ago.

Each year many such extraordinary scientific discoveries are made. The physical and biological world in which we live is truly astounding and wonderful. No matter what the extent of his general education or the caliber of his mental abilities, every human being might achieve satisfaction and increased happiness through an increased knowledge and understanding of the world. The sources of happiness in life are not so bountiful that man can afford to neglect such an important one. If the ever-present oppressing danger of world war can ultimately be averted, and the world can enter into a continuing period of peace and friendliness, the intellectual activities of the average man may become a source of happiness to him comparable to that provided by his emotions.

The danger of world war, atomic war can be averted, through the efforts of man, through the application of man's intellect, of man's acquired knowledge, of science. This consummation may be prevented, however, by evil people who hope to profit from general disaster, who are willing to sacrifice the happiness, the lives, the freedom of the great majority of the people of the world for the benefit of a few, whose guiding principle is selfishness instead of altruism, self-love instead of brotherly love, who reject the principle of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number", deny the Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." It is the duty of all of us to oppose these evil men; to oppose violations of human rights, the oppression of minorities; to oppose the imposition of unnecessary loyalty oaths on professors, scientists, and teachers, restrictions on travel and intercourse with all the people of the world, and all interference with the utilization of man's knowledge for the benefit of the whole of mankind; it's our duty to work faithfully to achieve our goal of a peaceful world, a world of nations, of peoples living together in amity, in mutual respect and friendliness. If we do our duty we shall succeed: we shall enter into the era of happiness and peace.

Evidence that scientists are useful citizens, in a practical way, and that the world would be better off by having more of them, is provided by a statement of Sir Ewart Smith, the Director of Imperial Chemical Industries. He said recently that the reason that the productivity per worker in the United States is two and one half times as great in Britain is that the number of scientists and engineers per worker is two and one half times as great here as in Britain. By increasing the body of knowledge and consequently the productivity of the world, the wealth of the world, the standards of living of all people can be raised, and the number of people that the world can support satisfactorily can be increased.

One problem that will have to be met sooner or later is the problem of the control of the birth rate. At the present time the fractional rate of increase of population is greater in the United States than in India - we have one of the greatest rates of increase in population in the world. If, however, the advances in medicine were to find full application in India, so that the average expectancy of life of an infant rose from its present level of 30 to the American value of over 60, the problem of feeding the increased population would become an even more serious one, by far, than at present. This great problem, of controlling the birth rate, is one that needs to be attacked by scientists; it will be solved only when we know far more than at present about the nature of living organisms and biological processes.