Revelle Requests Congress to Aid Social Sciences

Congress and government agencies have been too timid in their support of the social and behavioral sciences, Roger R. Revelle, director of the Center of Population Studies of the School of Public Health, told the House Committee on Science and Astronautics yesterday.

Stepped-up support of these sciences may be mankind's only way of dealing with the problems caused by revolutionary advances in technology and the physical sciences, he said.

Revelle, a member of the House Committee's panel of advisors on science and technology, spoke at the Committee's seventh annual meeting with its advisors.

He suggested that the United States try to alleviate the world hunger problem by emphasizing food and food production in foreign aid programs. The nation's surplus of food grains is almost gone, he said, but the capacity to produce surpluses still remains and may have to be used.

Social and behavioral scientists should study world population control, Revelle said. And as another area for research, he cited the military revolution, which he claims has produced the "balance of terror" under which we live, and a economic alliance between partly hidden government and advanced industry.

Breakthroughs in computer design and data processing are threatening man's freedom by making the government potentially all-knowing and therefore infallible, Revelle warned. "Here," he said, "we need some research even the political scientists haven't thought of."

He noted that social scientist should try to analyze the psychological and cultural roots of conflict between human societies.

Such problems, he explained, involve the values, emotions and behavior of human beings. Because of this, he said, strengthening the social sciences may prove to be the only way of solving them.