public, there are now ten, or a hundred, working in secret. There may be
six men in the country who have a clear picture of what is going on in
science today. There may not be even one.
This is in itself a trend. Many leading scientists consider it a factor as
disabling as the nonsense of Lysenkoism is to Russian technology.
Nevertheless there are clear-cut trends which are certain to make this
coming era enormously more productive and interesting than the frantic one
we have just passed through. Among them are:
Cybernetics: The study of communication and control of mechanisms and
organisms. This includes the wonderful field of mechanical and electronic
“brains” — but is not limited to it. (These “brains” are a factor in
themselves that will speed up technical progress the way a war does.)
Semantics: A field which seems concerned only with definitions of words. It
is not; it is a frontal attack on epistemology — that is to say, how we
know what we know, a subject formerly belonging to long-haired
philosophers.
New tools of mathematics and log, such as calculus of statement, Boolean
logic, morphological analysis, generalized symbology, newly invented
mathematics of every sort — there is not space even to name these enormous
fields, but they offer us hope in every other field — medicine, social
relations, biology, economics, anything.
Biochemistry: Research into the nature of protoplasm, into enzyme
chemistry, viruses, etc., give hope not only that we may conquer disease,
but that we may someday understand the mechanisms of life itself. Through
this, and with the aid of cybernetic machines and radioactive isotopes, we
may eventually acquire a rigor of chemistry. Chemistry is not a discipline
today; it is a jungle. We know that chemical behavior depends on the number
of orbital electrons in an atom and that physical and chemical properties
follow the pattern called the Periodic Table. We don’t know much else, save
by cut-and-try, despite the great size and importance of the chemical
industry. When chemistry becomes a discipline, mathematical chemists will
design new materials, predict their properties, and tell engineers how to
make them — without ever entering a laboratory. We’ve got a long way to go
on that one!
Nucleonics: We have yet to find out what makes the atom tick. Atomic power?
— yes, we’ll have it, in convenient packages — when we understand the
nucleus. The field of radioisotopes alone is larger than was the entire
known body of science in 1900. Before we are through with these problems,
we may find out how the universe is shaped and why. Not to mention enormous
unknown vistas best represented by ? ? ? ? ?
Some physicists are now using two time scales, the T-scale, and the
tau-scale. Three billion years on one scale can equal an incredibly split
second on the other scale — and yet both apply to you and your kitchen
stove. Of such anarchy is our present state in physics.
For such reasons we must insist that the Age of Science has not yet opened.
The greatest crisis facing us is not Russia, not the Atom bomb, not
corruption in government, not encroaching hunger, nor the morals of young.
It is a crisis in the organization and accessibility of human knowledge. We
own an enormous “encyclopedia” — which isn’t even arranged alphabetically.
Our “file cards” are spilled on the floor, nor were they ever in order. The
answers we want may be buried somewhere in the heap, but it might take a
lifetime to locate two already known facts, place them side by side and
derive a third fact, the one we urgently need.
Call it the Crisis of the Librarian.
We need a new “specialist who is not a specialist, but a synthesist. (n) We
need a new science to be the perfect secretary to all other sciences.
But we are not likely to get either one in a hurry and we have a powerful
lot of grief before us in the meantime.
Fortune-tellers can always be sure of repeat customers by predicting what
the customer wants to hear . . . it matters not whether the prediction
comes true. Contrariwise, the weatherman is often blamed for bad weather.