FELlV E.
BROWDER
The basic ethos of our society is what
one political philosopher has called
possessive or acquisitive individual-
ism, the desire to acquire and possess
wealth, power, public celebrity and
other individual goods held in general
esteem. I f scientists were accused of
sharing this ethos, it would hardly
seem worthy of anyone’s even casual
attention. Yet scientists have been so
“accused,”and what makes the charge
noteworthy is that it is almost the op-
posite of the truth.
Academic scientists as a group, in-
deed academics generally, rarely covet
wealth w i t h any great seriousness.
would be hard to see w h y they had
chosen such careers if they did. Aside
from special classes of economists and
political scientists they rarely covet
power, political or otherwise. Even if
their life goals are achieved to the full-
est their celebrity rarely extends be-
yond their professional peers. I f they
demand funds from the federal gov-
ern me tit (and ma y a re surprising y
passive i n doing so), it is almost al-
ways funds needed to do their scienti-
fic work, or, at very most, to have
students or collaborators to do this
work with them. Of course, they have
to believe that this work is worth do-
ing and that it is important to find out
the basic laws of nature or to discover
scientific truths. Perhaps society can
forgive them this vanity.
There are of course issues of social
value involved on a deeper level than
those reflected in accusations of ac-
quisitiveness. Scientific research, like
the structure of our educational insti-
tutions and the framework of techno-
logical innovation-with both of
which it has been so closely linked - is
26
an essential part of the infrastructure
of our national society. Without it,
the work and life of this society will
soon prove unproductive and event-
ually lose its vitality. We Americans
have been extraordinarily careless and
disregardful of this infrastructure i n
recent decades. We cannot afford to
remain so much longer.
Why speak of science and the
future? Why not science
and the future of mankind? After all,
as a body of knowledge, of theory and
of technique, science is thoroughly in-
ternational. Scientific t r u t h . i f it is
valid, must be so by its nature, with-
out respect to national boundaries, or
to the races, creeds or national origins
of its discoverers. N o nation can hope
to monopolize scientific discovery or
techIiiyue in any scientific area for
very long, whether by intent or merely
by accident. Moreover, through a
powerful and deeply-rooted tradition
that goes back to the very earliest days
of modern science in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries (and can be
traced back even to the ancient world)
scientists have treated each other as
colleagues, without distinction of na-
tional origin or allegiance. Even the
brief deviations from this principle, as
in Western Europe in World War
testify to the strength of this principle
through the abhorrence they tend to
produce i n the scientific witness to
their existence. Thus as knowledge
and as discovery, science is trans-
national in its roots in a way that
our culture, our political and so-
cial traditions, and especially our
historical traditions are not.
Yet, a primary fact is that we live in
a world of nation-states and that the
sphere of life and activity of each
human being is bound up with the na-
tion-state in which that person lives
and functions. Scientific institutions,
scientists, engineers, teachers as peo-
ple, the tools of science, and especially
the social institutions and purposes
within which scientific technology is
applied -all are rooted in individual
nations (or in a few cases in Western
Europe, to regional coalitions of na-
tions). One can emigrate from a na-
tion-state with greater or less difficul-
ty; one cannot emigrate from the sys-
tem of nation-states.
When one speaks of the develop-
ment of science and of its interaction
with technology, especially in the do-
mains of economic production or of
military power, one is speaking of na-
tional policies, strengths, capacities,
resources and goals. International sci-
entific institutions are feeble and have
scanty resources, where they exist at
all. And even political entities like the
major states of the American Union
or the largest national or niultination-
al corporations have neither the stable
power nor the resources to play a
dominant, independent, autonomous
role for very long in the rapidly ex-
panding and increasingly intense com-
petition involved in the development
of science, technology and scientific
and technical education.
I f one pays more than superficial
attention to discussions of public poli-
cy in countries like France, West Ger-
many and Great Britain, one becomes
intensely conscious of this fact.
Translations of corresponding discus-
sions and wide-sweeping programs
from Japan are also centrally featured
in the European press. Many of us re-

cognize the centrality of scientific and
technical development and training as
a policy concern in mainland China
and in the advancing countries of the
so-called Third World.
The central theme of these discus-
sions-is that the national survival, not
to speak of national prosperity, for
any of these nations depends on high
-or scientific - technology. The in-
dispensable prerequisite is a scientific
and technical infrastructure which can
bring about the scientific and techni-
cal advances to sustain the momen-
tum of development of this technolo-
gy
Compared with statements on these
themes emanating from policy groups
in Western Europe and the Orient
with the most diverse ideological orig-
ins, the curious relative silence on the
U.S. scene is striking. Over the past
few years there have been occasional
statements of alarm in the business
sections of newspapers because the
Japanese, after subjecting U.S. auto-
mobile manufacturers and steel-mak-
ers to a ruinous competition through
their technical superiority, have now
dared to take over the world market in
certain categories of large integrated
circuits. They have even challenged
in computers. Yet the difficulties
this competition might present to our
future as a world economic force.seem
to have had, until very recently, no
major impact on any broad sector of
national policy-making in terms of fo-
cused public interest in national policy
or science and technology. After all,
couldn’t our competition with the
Japanese be resolved by some old-
fashioned measure like the renewal of
a tariff war, or perhaps through na-
tional incantation?
Americans have been extraordinar-
ily complacent over the last few years.
We ought to have looked carefully at
the logic and facts behind these West-
ern European and Japanese discus-
sions and policies and asked ourselves
whether the United States has the
privilege of ignoring what these other
countries regard as the central focus
for their future development. Are we
so far in the lead in science and tech-
nology, as some seem to think, that
we can afford to neglect serious consi-
deration of national policy in scienti-
fic and technical development? Can
we ignore the grave national crisis in
scientific and technical education at
the precollegiate level? Can we contin-
ue not to take seriously the strong
thrust of the Soviet system in mass sci-
entific and technical education as a
major component in their national se-
curity policy?
Certainly there are some superficial
reasons to justify complacency. The
United States still has the largest gross
national product, though seven ,or
eight countries surpass us in this area
per inhabitant. The United States still
leads the world in scientific prestige
and productivity as it has since World
War 11 in most major fields of science,
though no longer all. U.S. scientists
still win most of the Nobel Prizes in
the physical and biological sciences as
they have done for the last two de-
cades; still dominates the world
market for mainframe computers; the
United States has the only rocket shut-
tle. This is enough, say the compla-
cent. Why. should we want more?
The answer to that question raises
another, and question for
meaningful policy analysis, going far
beyond the present discussion. To
analyze the effects of any given policy
(or th.e lack of one), you don’t just ask
what the results will be tomorrow
morning, or the beginning of next
week, or the end of next month, or
even the beginning of next year. The
real question is what this policy-or
its consequences either through con-
tinuation or reversal- is going to
bring about five, ten, or even twenty
years from now..The current state is a
relatively small part of the analysis;
November 1982
a
the rate of change-even the accelera-
tion of a trend-is often much more
important. Take a simple and very ob-
vious example from economic data:
The present population of Japan is
about half of that of the United
States; its gross national product is
about 40-odd percent of ours.
The comparison is mildly favorable
to the United States, and not drasti-
cally alarming. If you pay attention to
trends, however, what is alarming is
that over the 1970s and continuing to-
day, the average yearly rate of in-
crease of .production in Japan has
been about 5 percent higher than in
the United States year by year, in
good times and bad. Do a little arith-
metic and ask where we will be ten or
twenty years from now if these trends
‘continue. One surefire way to main-
tain complacency - and the argument
has been seriously presented - is to ar-
gue that trends don’t exist and that the
experience of the last decade is mis-
leading. S o m e h o w , p r o d u c t i o n
growth in Japan will disappear next
year, and by a miracle of willpower
and pious thought, our own produc-
tion will grow gigantically. Very nice,
but not very believable. The Japanese
are very hard at work, through their
development policy in high technolo-
gy industries and scientific-technical
development, to make sure that the
trend continues or even increases.
Our national inability to think ser-
iously about the future seems to have
some curious roots. Let me offer one
illustration. A couple of years ago
there was a column in the Internation-
al Herald Tribune by a former sub-
cabinet-level official about this very
problem of economic competition
with the Japanese. The writer com-
mented that many observers had cred-
ited the Japanese with a very rational
approach to their economic develop-
ment but he did not agree. For exam-
ple, these analysts gave credit to MITI,
the Japanese national planning agen-
Bulletin of the AtomicScientists 27
 Felix Browder is Max Mason distinguished service professor
of mathematics and chairman of the mathematics department
at the University of Chicago (60637). This article is
adapted from the author’s Woodward Court lecture delivered
at the University on February 7. 1982.
cy for economic and technical devel-
opment, for having made the decision
more than a decade earlier that the fu-
ture of the Japanese automobile in-
dustry lay in the intensive develop-
ment of computerized subsystems and
robotized production. And this pre-
diction is in fact coming true. How-
ever, said our insightful columnist,
the agency decision was not rational
because it was not based upon the
state of the automobile market at that
It is a strange view of rationality
that divorces it completely from ob-
jective consequences. What seems to
matter to our U.S. pundit is how the
process fits into a formal analysis bas-
ed only upon the immediate situation.
The Japanese had carefully analyzed
the future, and this commentator
chastised them for not ignoring it.
It takes intensive training and in-
doctrination to think in such a specta-
cularly misguided way - the sort of
social phenomenon that, more than
50 years ago, Thorstein Veblen gave
the general label “trained incapacity.”
One suspects a thorough cost-benefit
brain washing. Yet it probably cannot
be rigorously established that it is
cost-effective for any given human be-
ing to keep on breathing. The more
sensible among us will therefore tend
to ignore this learned advice.
Suppose that we accept the chal-
lenge to be future-oriented, at least in
trying to diagnose the central prob-
lems the United .States faces in the
next 20 or 30 years and the general
steps necessary to meet these prob-
lems. Can we d o so with any degree of
sureness? Probably yes, though this
affirmative answer has a significant
qualification: barring catastrophes.
The most menacing potential catas-
trophe is the possibility of nuclear
war, whose outcome would certainly
be the reduction of all civilization to
absurdity and chaos. A less absolutely
menacing catastrophe, which would
prevent the positive solution of any
28
major problem, would be the disinteg-
ration of U.S. society from within
through social or economic convul-
sions. Drastic discontinuities like
these cannot be meaningfully pre-
dicted. And in certain domains, like
the course of the economy from year
to year, apparently no predictions
that have any degree of consensus or
sureness can be reached.
The scientific and technological do-
main is one of the few arenas of
human action in which large-scale
phenomena can be forecast with some
degree of real security. What is techni-
cally a n d scientifically feasible
(though certainly not its detailed form
nor the precise time-scale for its
achievement) can be roughly guessed
with a reasonable degree of confi-
dence. Many of the problem areas are
apparent without expert knowledge:
Energy resources: Whatever the
time table for the depletion of avail-
able fossil fuels and their synthesiz-
able variants as well as of processable
uranium, the only possible stable
source of large-scale energy in the
long run is nuclear fusion-if and
when the latter can be put to effective
operation.
Implementation of the computer
revolution in U.S. industrial produc-
tion and in the organization of U.S.
society.
Effective use of bio-engineering
techniques in industry and medicine
and particularly in agricultural food
production.
Reorganization of industry on a
more technologically innovative
basis.
Reconstruction of the bases of
our primary and secondary education
to produce a scientifically and techno-
logically competent population.
These are heterogeneous problems.
The first three involve scientific chal-
lenges; the latter two, drastic changes
in institutions. All five are focused on
the scientific-technological thrust of
the future development of U.S. socie-
ty. I t is a thrust we can reject only by
rejecting the possibility of national
survival and prosperity in the foresee-
able future.
Science is not a problem. It is al-
most certainly our most important na-
tional resource in the coming histori-
cal period. is a resource that needs
to be maintained, possibly even im-
proved, but certainly guarded against
deterioration. The core of the U.S.
scientific enterprise is our system of
research universities. They are the en-
vy of the world, and they must be pre-
served at the highest possible qualita-
tive level. This is not a matter of the
self-interest of the universities which,
if they were foolish, might be content
to survive comfortably at a much
lower level of achievement and intel-
lectual contribution than they make
today. I f the possibility of finding real
solutions to our whole complex of sci-
entific-technological problems is to be
realized, the survival of strong re-
search universities as the world’s lead-
ing centers of scientific activity must
become a central principle of national
policy. This whole complex of institu-
tions and resources is a national sys-
tem. It was built up since the end of
World War by an intelligently or-
ganized system of federal incentives
and support for initiatives by individ-
ual scientists, groups of scientists, and
scientific and academic institutions.
Despite its detractors, it represents
one of the major areas of federally
sponsored activity run almost solely
on the basis of critical assessment of
quality of achievement rather than
private interest or political or ideolo-
gical criteria. I t was built over a rela-
tively short period of time, and is one
of the glories of our society. It has
great momentum today, but could
easily be torn down or allowed to
dwindle into mediocrity.
In the short run, its broadest prob-
lem is that of recruitment of new tal-
ent. Because U.S. graduate schools of
 .
e
science are the wonder of the world it
is not surprising that they attract for-
eign students of great talent and moti-
vation. But one ought to be surprised
to find that close to half their students
in many fields of science come from
abroad. The situation is even more ap-
parent in the engineering field, and is
sometimes represented by federal
spokesmen as a threat to national se-
curity. The reasons for the dwindling
numbers of U.S. graduate students in
both science and engineering have
common elements as well as sharp dif-
ferences. The most important com-
mon element is the rapidly deteriorat-
ing situation in the past few years with
respect to the mathematics and sci-
ence education of the mass of students
in the primary and secondary schools
nationwide. This has clearly generated
an increasing percentage of students
entering college without the back-
ground and motivation to go into sci-
ence or technology.
In the engineering field, difficulties
in recruiting for graduate work
among U.S. students who have com-
pleted engineering undergraduate
programs is a consequence of the tre-
mendous market for such graduates
on the bachelor’s degree level, particu-
larly in computer-related fields, as
well as the relatively weak economic
, incentives for doctoral study. In sci-
ence and mathematics, the basic fac-
tor is undoubtedly the much higher
valuation placed on personal af-
fluence as an individual goal by recent
college generations and the accurate
perception that academic and scien-
tific careers are not a reasonable path
to such affluence. Whatever the
causes, the figures are in and the trend
is drastically unfavorable. Including
both domestic and foreign graduate
students, the numbers of PhDs likely
to be produced a couple of years from
now in either physics or the mathe-
matical sciences (excluding computer
science) .will be less than in the 1950s
before Sputnik.
Recruitment of engineers and tech-
nicians is one of the prime difficulties
to be faced by U.S. high technology
industries. Another is the lack of any
focused national effort comparable to
the massive efforts of the Japa.nese
planning agency. The scale and imag-
ination that go into the Japanese pro-
jects are difficult to envisage unless
you have heard the details of such
audacious projects as the Japanese
Fifth Generation of Computers, de-
signed to begin shortly and run over
the next decade.
Comparing the details of this pub-
lished plan with the fragmentary and
short-range effort in the United
States, one begins to think we are liv-
ing in the horse-and-buggy age. Even
IBM, freed of anti-trust worries, may
not be able to compete, in the long
run, on an equal level with the re-
sources mobilized by MITI from the
Japanese economy. There is a hint
that the IBM people are not sure they
can either. There have been sugges-
PI
a of
November 1982 The Bulletin of the
tions that a federal agency to mobilize
U.S. efforts in scientific-technological
development should be established,
but the Reagan Administration’s pre-
judice against a federal role in the
economy makes it unlikely that such
initiatives will soon be carried for-
ward. Yet, in today’s world, our prin-
cipal competitors are organizing their
resources on a national basis and, in
the case of Japan, have succeeded in
wiping the United States out of the
lead in major high technology indus-
tries and markets. It is therefore sui-
cidal to allow the U.S. response to be
guided by ideological considerations
which make no practical sense in the
world environment where we must
compete.
Similarly, there is a massive contra-
diction between the widely recognized
inadequacy of current U.S. pre-col-
legiate education for producing a sci-
entifically and technologically literate
population, and the Administration’s
clear lack of interest in any kind of
federal role in science education. Pro-
fessor Izaak Wirszup, my colleague at
the University of Chicago, has spent
much time and energy in publicizing
the contrast between science and
mathematics education in the United
States and the enormous efforts made
in these fields in the Soviet school sys-
tem since the educational reform of
1966. These efforts were first directed
at the need for trained military and
industrial personnel in the- Soviet
Union, a nation which remains our
major potential military adversary. .,
Wirszup’s analysis was confirmed
by a similar comparison of trends in
pre-collegiate education in Japan and
West Germany, published in a Na-
tional Science Foundation Report to
the President in August 1980. Reac-
tion to these facts, however, has been
both confused and confusing. The
confusion resulted from empty talk to
the effect that, by recognizing the ex-
istence of the problem, we would
commit ourselves to emulating many
Scientists 29
 U.S.
of the undesirable features of the So-
viet system of education. How empty
this talk is can be seen i f one asks
whether recognizing an even less fav-
orable comparison with Japan would
force us to adopt Japanese customs or
styles. Perhaps the National Science
Foundation Report merely went to the
wrong President. The present Admin-
istration has chosen to abolish science
education as a concern of the Founda-
tion; and after the Department of
Education made some feeble efforts
of its own to consider the problem,
that whole Department was disman-
tled.
To transform and improve the mas-
sive and unwieldy system of U.S. pri-
mary and secondary education in-
volves difficulties that beggar the im-
agination. My own acquaintance with
the details of the problem came during
a recent period of service on Nation-
al Research Council Committee which
was asked to survey and make recom-
mendations on national policy for sci-
ence, mathematics and engineering
education. The Committee report
reached the National Science Founda-
tion just at the time the Office of
Management and Budget first sig-
naled its interest in abolishing the
Science Education section of the
Foundation. The Report asked for a
National Council on Science, Mathe-
matics, arid Engineering Education
similar to the President’s Council of
Economic Advisers. No such Council
seems likely to appear i n the near fu-
ture, but it should be held to the honor
of the National Science Board, the
governing council of the Foundation,
that in spite of marching orders from
David Stockman and his cohorts to
march out of science education, they
have taken the rebellious initiative of
founding a Commission on Science
Education under the direct sponsor-
ship of the National Science Board.
This is probably only a gesture in pres-
ent circumstances. but one that de-
30
serves public attention and praise.
The zeal of the Office of Manage-
ment and Budget to cut science educa-
tion out of the federal structure is
probably not a simple consequence of
the budget-cutting mood, nor even of
the passion for states rights and local-
ism invoked in the “New Federalism”
progam. more likely and more im-
portant explanation lies in the connec-
tion of science education with the
ideology of one of the major political
clan:; gathered under the banner of the
present Administration- the Moral
aj ori t y .
For several decades, the fundamen-
talist religious movement now gather-
ed under this name has been carrying
on guerrilla warfare with the school
systems of the nation, and with the
National Science Foundation in parti-
cular, over their desire to have biology
and cosmology taught from the test of
the Bible, or simple paraphrases
thereof. Since it is illegal under the
U.S. Constitution to teach religious
doctrine in the public schools, the
movement has taken the name of “sci-
entific creationism.” As an Arkansas
judge recently ruled, there is nothing
scientific in taking the date of the
creation of the Earth and all living
species as 4003 B.C. or 6000 B.C. or
20,000 B.C. on the authority of
Genesis, Bishop Ussher, or his
somewhat less learned epigones of re-
cent times. (One might even comment
that there is something very odd from
a religious point of view in labelling
the Deity a systematic faker in
creating the fossil record to make it
look. as though the Earth is several
billion years old.)
I t appears that responsible people
are beginning to realize the gravity
and importance of one or another as-
pect of this whole complex of prob-
lem:;. Thus, i n one morning’s news-
papers a writer recently emphasized
the importance of technological in-
novation and its role in the increase of
U.S. productivity; another, the im-
portance of technically educated and
literate personnel in industry and the
military; a third, the importance of
improving pre-collegiate mat hematics
and science education; a fourth, the
importance of stable, well-organized,
adequate funding for scientific re-
search; a fifth, the importance of
maintaining the research universities
as a major national resource.
The crucial point is that these prob-
lems cannot be attacked singly be-
cause they are inseparably linked. We
must achieve national realization that
we live in a world dominated by sci-
ence and science-based technology
and must organize our policies around
that central fact. essential step in
the formulation of such policies is an
explicit recognition that our problenis
in this domain are national and there-
fore can be tackled adequately only at
the national level by leadership from
the federal government. How such
leadership can be exercised to achieve
significant positive results within our
political and economic system de-
mands careful study and analysis. The
growing chorus of voices demanding
such analysis and policies gives hope
that before too long the issue will ac-
tually be met.
Alfred North Whitehead was one of
the most penetrating of this century’s
thinkers. Some of his words, written
in 1916, are pertinent to my theme:
“In the conditions of modern life
the rule is absolute, the race which
does not value trained intelligence is
doomed. Not all your heroism, not
all your social charm, not all your
wit, not all your victories on land or
at sea, can move back the finger of
fate. To-day we maintain ourselves.
To-morrow science will have moved
forward yet one more step, and there
will be no appeal from the judgment
which will then be pronounced on
the uneducated .” 0