Unrepentant Scientist

Should science be on the defensive, remorseful for having made the Bomb? Among those who think not is quick-smiling, quick-thinking Dr. James Bryant Conant, Harvard's eminent chemist-president, and a top U.S. wartime scientist. Last week, Dr. Conant held a press conference in Manhattan to launch his just-published book, On Understanding Science.*

"Science," Dr. Conant says with conviction, "is on the offensive and extending into new fields. From all sides we feel a demand for more understanding of science, and of what it can do for humanity."

The new book, though physically small, is no light reading for summer afternoons. It is mostly a series of lectures (delivered at Yale) on teaching science to undergraduates who do not intend to become professional scientists. Dr. Conant's idea: illustrate the "scientific method" by citing historical cases in which science has solved tough problems. Science, he believes, cannot be a mere bulk of static knowledge, however large: "Almost by definition, science moves ahead."

And where is it moving? Nearly all scientific progress thus far, says Dr. Conant, has been in the "natural sciences"--those concerned with man's environment, rather than with man himself. The "social sciences" (everything from psychology to history) have certainly not given man much help in keeping up with the flood of revolutionary knowledge and techniques developed by the natural sciences. Science's next broad campaign may be to develop the social sciences to the point where they do some good.

Without attempting to minimize the Bomb, Dr. Conant believes that science itself holds the answer. "If ... we think of the potential power of destruction of the atomic bomb as the price we pay for health and comfort and aids to learning in this scientific age, we can perhaps more coolly face the task of making the best of an inevitable bargain, however hard. . . . We can begin to walk boldly along the tightrope of the atomic age."

* Yale University Press, $2. In deference to his publishers, Dr. Conant became the first Harvard president ever to be interviewed in the Yale Club.

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