THE DESTROYER OF MAN

Especially in recent years it has become the fashion for everyone except, in most cases, the scientists, to regard Science, with a large S--as a kind of Juggernaut or Frankenstein before whose blind onrush mankind is inevitably doomed to destruction. What were once considered triumphs of mind over matter have become victories of the machine over man, horribly portrayed in Vanity Fair woodcuts and the magazine supplements of Sunday newspapers. And the ever increasing momentum of scientific progress has startled philosophers out of pleasant and meaningless speculation into the discovery that even the thin air out of which they ordinarily manufacture their syllogisms has more diverse and practical uses.

The reasons for this astonishing situation do not lie far below the surface. It merely happens that about three hundred years ago, isolated individuals about the continent of Europe wanted to know. That is, they refused to accept the dog-oared Aristotle so long revered by lothargic scholasticists, and became engrossed in finding out for themselves. Their chief instrument was doubt; their great virtue, a painstaking, indefatigable capacity for work. With Galileo, Descartes and Bacon began modern science--and so sound were the methods employed, so fruitful the results of this often-condemned skepticism, that now in 1924, the world is "warned against the dangers of entrusting the weapons of science to a humanity intellectually and morally not educated to their use."

Naturally, since the most effective use of the human intellect has been directed at revealing the secrets of Nature, this particular compartment of man's knowledge has far outstripped the others. But there is every reason to believe that the so-called scientific attack, if launched at man himself, his social reactions, his passions and prejudices would produce somewhat comparable results in these infinitely more important fields. Only children imagine that this means a mathematical expression of the "human equation". But the scientific approach--careful inductive reasoning only upon large quantities of carefully weighed and weighted facts, with constant open-mindedness and willingness to build slowly and painstakingly even while expecting new facts which demand new and flexible hypotheses--is not inapplicable to human problems.

Its use has long been delayed, by the self-isolation and intense concentration of scientists--absolutely necessary, however, for their work,--by the tremendous difficulties due to the complexities of the situation, by that curious but not by any means unnatural homocentric impulse which makes man consider himself a thing apart from Nature and inexplicable according to her laws. But the time has obviously arrived when the success of human endeavor in investigating and subsequently in exploiting material forces must be balanced by equal success in exploring and controlling human forces. And the methods which have brought about the present crisis, because of their one-sided application, are all upon which man can rely to restore a safe and reasonable equilibrium.