Science Meets Society

In 1962, a dashing young Harvard professor was stopped by a reporter from the Boston Herald. The professor, Everett Mendelsohn, was asked, "Who would you like to haunt tomorrow?" Mendelsohn replied that "I wouldn't mind haunting Governor Ross Barret of Mississippi, and I think I'd wear a white sheet while I did so he'd feel at home. And all editorial writers who too easily commit the nation to dangerous actions in these troubled times."

When posed with the same question thirty-three years later, the respected Professor of the History of Science responds that "I don't like haunting." Yet Mendelsohn is not above confronting the likes of Newt Gingrich, whom he refers to as "that erstwhile professor of History."

"I would want to ask [Gingrich] if he has forgotten the history which he purported to teach," said Mendelsohn. "In a sense he has lost sight of the elements in human history where compassion played an important role."

Such criticism cannot be made of Mendelsohn, who has demonstrated compassion for others and devotion to social issues throughout his career in the biological and physological sciences. In fact, Mendelsohn's social consciousness predates his pursuit of things scientific.

At the age of eighteen, Mendelsohn chose to be a conscientious objector to the Korean War. Now, surrounded by books in his Science Center office, the professor speaks of this decision as one of his most formative experiences. He views it as the basis of his social conscience, a stance of which he remains proud. Luckily, the young Mendelsohn was never called to duty, and so never faced the prospect of incarceration.

"Having made that as a commitment, I decided I would give some portion of my life on a continuing basis to exercising social responsibility," the professor says of his protest. He seems to have followed through with this resolution. In conversation, Mendelsohn comes across more like a political activist with an interest in the natural sciences than the other way around.

As a conscientious objector, Mendelsohn became involved with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker Service organization. At that time, he dealt with the Soviet-American conflict, specifically with issues of disarmament. In 1968, a problem arose in a refugee camp in Gaza. The American Friends Service Committee asked Mendelsohn to swing by and help out; he has been involved with the Middle East ever since.

These days, Mendelsohn visits the Middle East several times a year, often holding study groups between Israelis and Palestinians under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The most recent study group focused on the security issues that will need to be resolved in the final stages of the peace negotiations; four Palestinians and four Israelis participated, along with several parties from outside the region.

Mendelsohn's professional interest, of course, is in the history of science. His popular core courses "Darwinian Revolution" and "Science and Society in the Twentieth Century" explore the interaction of scientific ideas with social practices. Mendelsohn's own work considers the external effects of science, like war, as well as its internal structure--how scientific institutions are organized, for instance, and the "ethos of research."

Mendelsohn notes the tendency in social thought to "read social differentials as biological differentials," a tendency highlighted in the recent The Bell Curve controversy. "My own sense is that the biology has never been good enough, never subtle enough, to deal with those social differentials," Mendelsohn explains. "It is a kind of urge to say you can do nothing about it; it is locked into the laws of nature. Beware, for seldom has that been that case. Biological determinism has its allure--it simplifies, but even though it has its allure, again and again it has been shown to be inadequate." According to Mendelsohn, scientists' tremendous advances in understanding the human animal often lull them into the false belief that they can explain far more than their data indicates.

Mendelsohn speaks of science in terms of social responsibility. True, he seems more interested in teaching these days than in haunting anyone. Thirty-three years after his run-in with the Herald reporter, though, one can still see the outline of Ross Barret's ghost in the polished figure of Everett Mendelsohn.