The Nat. Sci. Dilemma

The recent report by the Committee on Science in General Education represents an another unsuccessful attempt to clarify the role of science in a college curriculum, and by implication in the more general body of educated men. It is unsuccessful because it does not seem willing to admit the unusual characteristics which surround science as an intellectual discipline.

At the very beginning of its report the Committee gives the following motivation for its investigations: "The increasingly important role that science plays in shaping the lives of men makes it urgent that graduates of Harvard College should have some idea of the discipline which is ultimately responsible for this influence."

In addition, the Committee presents a specific program for imparting this "idea" to the knowledge-hungry young scholar. Courses should be instituted which offer a "knowledge of the fundamental principles of a special science and give the student an idea of the methods of science as they are known today." Such courses would unquestionably be very beneficial for a student with some touch of scientific curiosity, but it is a bit difficult to see just why they would give this idea of scientific discipline (as a molding force in modern life) any better than Nat. Sci. 10 does.

Behind this report, of course, is the idea that responsible Americans of the future will have to make important decisions involved with the complexity of modern life, and since science plays such a decisive role in this complex, it follows that educated men should know something about science. Unfortunately, however, there is a major difference between science and a field such as Comparative Literature--a difference of language. Whereas any intelligent person who has a certain facility with words can understand the weighty sentences of the expert in Comp. Lit., the same is not true in general of science. Indeed, the more advanced branches of physics and chemistry are so tied up with such exotic devices as tensors, spinors, bras, kets, partial differential equations, groups and the like, that any understanding of the real workings of modern science is virtually impossible for the layman.

The Committee on Science in General Education was, of course, well aware of this fact, and one feels that what the report would really like to do is to create an interest in science, or at least a respect for the work of the scientist. One of the main problems facing science in America is that the well educated non-scientists, on the one hand, tend to look upon science as an inferior intellectual pursuit, one that neglects the really important things in life, while the less highly educated view the scientist as either a fabulous magician-type or a man bent on destroying the American way of life.

Science is trapped between these extremes, and the way out is not apparent. It is obviously desirable, given the existence of science as an historical fact, that it be respected as a genuine intellectual activity of considerable proportion, and it is possible that really intense, interesting courses exploring some branch of science might help in this direction.

But the real problem lies well beyond this. The question of whether or not the generally educated Conantman could ever make any very profound judgement on the merits of this or that scientific program on purely scientific grounds, must at present be answered negatively. It seems likely that there will be a continuing need for the Killian-type scientific advisor at all levels, and such suggestions as the Committee's, urging the use of calculus in Nat. Sci., do not and cannot go very far towards alleviating this situation.

Nor do suggestions for remedying the problem come easily to mind. One may, regretfully, say that the unfortunate difficulty posed by science's abstraction is here to stay and wish that Galileo had never been born; but this wish, in the face of man's persistent curiosity, is hopelessly naive.