Snow's Appendix Answers Critics

C. P. Snow has replied to the numerous criticisms provoked by the Godkin lectures he delivered at Harvard last year in a recently published appendix to his essay Science and Government.

Snow emphasizes that his critics missed the fundamental point of the book when they attacked his treatment of the personal controversy between. Tizard and Lindeman, two leading scientists who advised military strategy during World War II.

The great danger of the powerful position held by Churchill's friend, Lindemann, in military policy making was not, Snow maintains, due to his personal incompetence or misjudgments per so. Snow asserts instead that, "Whoever he is, whether he is the wisest scientist in the world, we must never tolerate a scientific overlord again."

The British author-scientist conceded that if he were to give the Godkin lectures again he might alter slightly the emphasis and tone of his remarks. But he states that he would still use the same illustrations to reach the same conclusions.

As the critics have pointed out, Snow agrees that Lindemann may indeed have acknowledged from the start that radar was an important weapon to develop for the defense of the British Isles. But, he counters, Lindemann almost fatally hampered the successful development of radar by assigning highest priority to his own gimmicks.