Conant and Common Sense

Science is misunderstood, President Conant has discovered. Especially in his work with government research projects, Conant has noticed that laymen who have to make decisions about scientific projects are ill-equipped to evaluate expert opinion or, worse, have no conception about what science can or cannot do. Frequently the layman confuses science with magic and will swallow exaggerated claims for a new process submitted either by scientific charlatans or dangerously over-enthusiastic investigators. Some familiarity with the manner in which scientists think will help the layman to make wise decisions about scientific work, Conant feels. "Science and Common Sense" is designed to provide this sort of acquaintanceship with what Conant calls "the tactics and strategy of science."

"Science and Common Sense" originated in lectures, first in a series given at Yale on how to teach "understanding science" and then in the class talks delivered here during the experimental years of Natural Sciences 4. The book has the advantages of Conant's lucid lecture style. He takes care to tell the reader what he will say, why he wants to say it, and how he will say it, before actually attacking a problem. A book about science necessarily has to tangle with some technical material which could obscure main points for readers particularly ill-equipped with scientific fundamentals. Conant's contrived clarity, however, insures unity for "Science and Common Sense."

As it is, "Science and Common Sense" is about as non-technical as could be asked. Conant avoids complicated scientific details by making his points with basic cases in the growth of the experimental sciences, such as Boyle's work with pneumatics, the discovery of the nature of combustion, and Pasteur's work with fermentation. These cases have the added advantage of illustrating Conant's definition of science: "An interconnected series of concepts and conceptual schemes that have developed as a result of experimentation and observation and are fruitful of further experimentation and observations."

Special emphasis lies on the word "fruitful" throughout the book since Conant looks upon science as a thing very much alive. He rejects the widely held conception that scientific method is a well ordered sifting and evaluation of facts. Instead it is a process in which human beings grope, often clumsily, toward an idea. He relates scientific investigation to life. No longer is it more test tube drama.

Regrettably, Conant fails to include the case which was probably most valuable and entertaining of those he lectured about in Natural Science 4; that concerning development of the conceptual schemes which lead to the manufacture of the atomic bomb. Perhaps he considered this material too technical, but one can hardly help think that readers would have been willing to make a special effort to understand a case so intimately related to current times.

As a university president and former scientific researcher, Conant is particularly concerned with the place of pure investigatory science in society. He argues fervently for government and industry support of pure science, which he suggests is quite continuous with applied science, the two being merely opposite ends of the same spectrum. He finds the university the logical home for pure science, for only in an atmosphere of freedom is it likely to flourish.