• oblivious of the possibly harmful applications of our research results; and
• above all, completely rational and unemotional.
These perceptions are, in part, responsible for the authority of science. Like all stereotypes, however, they depersonalize. Scientists are above average in intelligence, and I have known individual scientists who were myopic, precise, conservative, or oblivious. I have seen scanty evidence, however, that scientists in general fulfill the stereotypes above. Only our publications are completely rational and unemotional; their authors, in contrast, are passionate.
Scientists do tend to differ from most lay people in their techniques, particularly in their embracing of the scientific methods. But of course every kind of specialist differs from lay people in embracing certain techniques and achieving professionalism in exercising those techniques. Like many other specialists, scientists inadvertently build a barrier of jargon. The jargon permits efficient, exact communication among specialists but seems to the outsider to be deliberately exclusive and abstruse. The motivations of scientists -- to the extent that one can generalize -- resemble those of artists; they differ only in degree from most other people.
We are craftsmen, not geniuses.
Science and Society
On seeing the culmination of the Manhattan Project (the first detonation of a nuclear bomb) J. Robert Oppenheimer [1945] quoted from the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.”
Some species are solitary and some are social. People try to gain the advantages of both strategies, living together in an interdependent society but encouraging individuality. Inevitably conflict erupts between individual and societal needs. This balancing act is acutely felt by scientists, who accept support but not control from society. The scientist listens to cultural guidelines but personally selects values and priorities [Campbell, 1988b]. The “age-old conflict between intellectual [or moral] leadership and civil authority” [Bronowski, 1973] was fought by Socrates, Jesus, Galileo, Darwin, and Gandhi, as well as by scientists whose names are forgotten. Einstein [1879-1955] may have underestimated the strength of the opposition in his 1953 comment:
“In the realm of the seekers after truth there is no human authority. Whoever attempts to play the magistrate there founders on the laughter of the Gods.”
Scientific responsibility is personal:
In 1933 Leo Szilard was stopped at a red light while walking to work, when suddenly he realized that neutron bombardment could potentially initiate an explosive chain reaction. He faced the choice of keeping his discovery secret or publishing it, of delaying its use or allowing its abuse. Seeking secrecy, he took out a patent and assigned it to the British admiralty [Bronowski, 1973], but of course development of the atomic bomb would not be slowed by a patent. In 1939 he ghost-wrote a letter, signed by Einstein, which warned President Roosevelt of the danger of nuclear weapons.
Szilard would have empathized with the anonymous statement [cited by Matthiessen, 1978]: “God offers man the choice between repose and truth: he cannot have both.” Then, as now, applied
