T#chuologyla Sockty, Vol. 1, pp. 107-I 13 (1979) 0160-791X/79/020107-07502.00/0 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved. Copyright © 1979 Pergamon Press Ltd

Science and Technology: Resources for Human and Economic Development

Thomas Malone

Much of the hopc and the apprehension---concerning prospects for the world community in the next two centuries is deeply rooted in the character and the quality of the interaction between science and society. But we must recognize that, unless we combine courage, foresight, and compassion with the ability to marshall our intellectual resources, the outlook for this increasingly interdependent world is rather bleak.

In discussing an explicit role for science in world affairs, we must offer a realistic appraisal of the capability and the potential of modern science to contribute boldly and constructively to a vast array of human problems. This appraisal calls for a thoughtful exploration of past events and a reasoned speculation on the three questions raised so eloquently by Immanuel Kant two centuries ago: "What can we know? What ought we to do? What may we hope?"

In the Past

It is well to remember that the earth came into being (in a manner we do not yet fully understand) nearly five billion years ago. Three billion years ago life began as one- celled organisms. Invertebrates appeared about 500 million years ago, and so-called modern man dates back only tens of thousands of years.

As the pattern of evolution changed, and civilization developed, thought was given to human values and human hopes. During the age of the great river valley civilizations, people in India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China looked beyond their present times and dreamed of a better order. Later, the classical miracles of Greece and Rome carried new designs for relationships among men to even higher levels.

In more recent centuries, three major forces have helped to shape the character of Western civilization and of man's thinking, as well as his material environment. The first was the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries. From Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, we learned the structure of a disciplined new mathematical and experimental science that broadened our understanding by giving men both new evidence about the universe and new methods by which to reason about it.

Thomas F. Malone is a geophysicist and meteorologist who is currently Director of the Hoicomb Research Institute at Butler University and Foreign Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences. He was Chairman of the Steering Committee for the symposium on the application of science and technology to development held in Singapore in January, 1979, and has served in various capacities by Presidential appointment.

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The second force was the Industrial Revolution, which began in the late 18th century with the transformation of the textile industry in England and which flowered in the 19th century with the industrial development of Europe and the United States. It brought about not only a change in the quality of life, but a new consolidation and integration of scientific scholarship. New mathematical theories encompassed all of physics. The chemistry of organic and inorganic substances was firmly founded. The Darwinian revolution led to an understanding, in the biological sense, of what we are.

The third development was the scientific-technological industrial revolution, which has, since World War II, changed social and environmental conditions so rapidly that many people have lost their traditional roles in society. The basis of the wealth of nations has been transformed. The struggle against nature for existence no longer needs to be a prime human goal, and this latest revolution has now reached a stage at which the natural processes that link us to the world around us are now being disrupted on a global scale.

Four major processes are being affected by man's increasing ability to control his own biology and his own environment:

• the conversion of light energy from the sun into the chemical energy that sustains plant and animal life;

• the biogeochemical cycling by which essential nutrients are passed through the biosphere to sustain plant, animal, and human life;

• the biological processes by which all living things reproduce, flourish, and die; and

• the perceiving, gathering, processing, and communicating of information, which makes possible the interaction of living things with each other and with their environments.

Biology and Environment

Through our increasing ability to control our own biology and our environment, we are introducing truly significant perturbations in these four processes. The impli- cations are many, including: • Although our capacity to tap various forms of energy has multiplied the work

capability of an individual hundreds of times, it also threatens the world with nuclear destruction and with dissipation of the ultra-violet-shielding layer of ozone in the upper atmosphere. A century or two of the unrestrained growth in energy production from fossil fuels could have a profound influence on the global climate.

• Our capacity to manipulate materials provides us with a host of new and useful consumer goods, ranging from petrochemical products to hand computers. It makes possible the "Green Revolution" by providing new varieties of growing things, new insecticides, and new fertilizers. But this capability is also the source of air, water, and land pollutants that pose increasingly serious toxic threats to human life.

• The capacity to influence biological processes has led to new and more produc five strains of grain and breeds of animals; it has prolonged human life expec-

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tancy. It has also aggravated the explosively expanding demands of more and more people for limited resources. It is posing profound ethical problems for medicine. DNA recombination and cloning are presenting ethical dilemmas to society.

• Our burgeoning capacity to handle information may turn out to be the most portentous of all. We can observe parts of the universe which have previously been veiled from the human eye, and we can manipulate machines millions of miles away. We can perform calculations and solve problems that were regarded as impossible, in a practical sense, just a few years ago. But we are also jeopardizing the privacy of the individual, and substituting an infor- mation-processing capacity that has no ethical value system for one that does. We are in danger of losing control of the apparatus that converts natural resources into goods and services.

Taken together in their positive aspects, these four capacities will make it possible to double or even triple--mankind's ability over the next few decades to transform earth's natural resources into goods and services necessary both to sustain life and to give it meaning. On the other hand, a doubling in the world's population is projected also over a period of decades. The "carrying capacity" of the earth may then be reached, with the potentially explosive problem of distributing limited resources; in the extreme, the result could be the extinction of our civilization.

The Crossroads

Society is, indeed, at a crossroads. Our most crucial task will be to select the road which leads to harmonious relationships among men and between man and nature, rather than the path to an escalating series of catastrophes of famine, diminishing natural resources, and violent conflict between ideologies as well as between rich and poor.

Our choice will not be made by a world plebescite, but in the manner indicated 20 years ago by John yon Neuman, in answer to his own question, "Can We Survive Technology?" In sum, he said, "Yes, probably, provided that there is a long sequence of small but correct decisions.. . the intelligence exercise of day-to-day judgment." This is a proper concern for scientists and engineers. The realization that humankind is at a watershed has emerged relatively recently and seems not to be generally appreciated by policy makers, if one can judge from the course on which human affairs appear now to be embarked. A careful, sharply focused assessment of the elements of the situation might serve as a catalyst to stimulate reexamination of policies all over the world.

A new dimension of social concern must be added, then, to the scientific enterprise--without deflecting the motivation to answer Kant's question: "What can we know?" There is scarcely a facet of our physical and biological world that is not now being explored in an effort to extend the revolution in understanding that is now underway. The overall effort has been so productive that each of us can take quiet pride in its accomplishments. It is, and will continue to be, an exciting adventure of the human mind and spirit. The interaction of science and technology has profoundly altered the condition and the prospects for society.

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With a current doubling time of eight years in the growth of scientific knowledge, 90 percent of all scientific information now available has been assembled within our own lifetime. Clearly, the most important pages in the scientific literature are yet to be written during the thousands, and, yes, millions of years that the human species can claim as its rightful future tenure on the earth.

The need for an enhanced relationship between science and public affairs is not only a theme among scientists. There are arising strong external pressures on the scientific community to bring to bear on societal problems the enormous power for betterment that: science is seen to possess.

Can We Cope?

Changed attitudes, new conceptual frameworks, institutional innovations--these appear to be the prerequisites of a flexible, dynamic international policy for science, a policy that incorporates greater concern for societal problems while preserving and enhancing traditional values of the scientific discipline. Can we cope with an international science policy? Can we develop new conceptual frameworks which cross disciplinary boundaries? Can we create the institutions required for embracing new attitudes?

It is not sufficient to debate in a vacuum what science can do to alleviate global problems. The list of ills is seemingly endless, and space permits touching lightly on only five general areas of concern: 1) food, nutrition, health, and population; 2) availability of--and equity in access to--natural resources; 3) education; 4) human settlements; and 5) the nuclear threat.

Library shelves are filled with learned diagnosis, prognosis, and prescription for tackling the closely interrelated problems of food, nutrition, health, and population. The basic facts themselves are awesome. More than 400 million people in the world suffer from food deficiencies. The lives of 10 million children are in jeopardy because of malnutrition; in India alone, one million children die from malnutrition every year. The profound effect of malnutrition on mental retardation is just beginning to be understood. But health problems transcend an adequate diet. There are indications that a significant fraction of the 350,000 deaths from cancer in the United States in 1974 were related to environmental chemical contaminants,* another form of health problem that is only beginning to be recognized.

Overriding these somber facts is the expectation that the population of the world will be close to six or seven billion individuals by the year 2000--even if measures of population control gain far wider acceptance.

Clearly, the world scientific community is in a position to contribute to the alleviation of these health and nutrition problems, even though we have only begun to tackle the basic problems of producing more food for these additional people.

The scarcity of, and the problem of equitable access to, natural resources-- particularly energy--has caught up almost overnight with a world addicted to a seemingly infinite reservoir of cheap and accessible petroleum. The issue of resources is squarely before us in the form of the United Nations call to work toward a New * The Sixth Annual Report of the Council on Environmental Quality, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govern- ment Printing Office, December, 1975.

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International Economic Order "based on equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and cooperation among all states, irrespective of their economic and social sys tems . . . and insure steadily accelerating economic and social development and peace and justice for present and future generations."*

An Intricate Blend

Noble aspirations, these, to which any humane scientist can subscribc and then return comfortably to his work. But this tranquil isolation is fast becoming an anachronism. What we need now is an intricate blend of sophisticated science and technology with economic and political theory and practice. We are just starting to construct new conceptual frameworks that will allow this unified approach to the sharing of earth's limited natural resources.

The hope is that these aspirations will begin to converge. An appropriate milestone of progress will be the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development, to be held in August. Our role, as scientists, is that of illuminators, or helmsmen, aiding and guiding the decision-makers from various forms of governments who will be responsible for translating into action the program plans made at this Conference.

And so, on to the problem of education. This may seem an unusual topic here, but it is fitting that we, who profess to be custodians of an important segment of knowledgc knowledge that we feel is vital to the future of man--be deeply con- cerned that more than 800 million people are illiterate. Consider, for a moment, the intellectual power that we squander because nearly a billion people can neither read nor write in this age when we can communicate instantaneously and simultaneously with each other around the world. Von Neuman 's long sequence of small but correct decisions will indeed be required if civilization is to survive. The chances that those small decisions will be correct will be enhanced when illiteracy is obliterated from the face of the earth. As scientists, let us join the effort to eliminate this "last great scourge of mankind."

Some might argue that a fourth problem, that of human habitation, lies outside the realm of responsibility of the world scientific community. But many people feel that we must redefine that boundary. Enrique Pefialosa, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, observed that:

We must accept that the human race is now living in an era of jarring transition. We are rushing toward the day when the great part of our species will live in a previously unconceived state of compaction. We must very quickly devise physical, social, and environmental responses to that condition.

The size of this task is awesome. Given present population growth, the equivalent of 3500 cities of one million inhabitants each will have to be established and equipped over the next 30 years. Providing structure, facilities, and services, and coping with unemployment, pollution, congestion, crime, and social alienation are

* Portion of Resolution adopted at the Sixth Special Session of the UN General Assembly, April 9 to May 2, 1974.

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formidable challenges. The annual growth of slums and squatter settlements in some of the major cities of Asia and Latin America is already ranging from 5 % to well over 10%.

The Nuclear Hazard

Finally, the hazard of nuclear catastrophe already deeply concerns us all. World interdependency notwithstanding, we live in an era of intense nationalism, in which there is a legitimate place for reasonable measures of national defense. But it is not within the tenets of science and technology--and certainly not within the principles of enlightened humanism-- that any nation should maintain, let alone expand, nuclear technology capable of placing 500 million people at fatal risk in a single day.

The North-South component of this irrational East-West arms race is just beginning, consuming material and intellectual resources which are desperately needed for more constructive projects. If the world at times seems to be peopled with madmen, need the scientific community associate itself with their madness ? And yet between a quarter and a half of all the technical people in the world are involved in preparing for conflict. Annual global expenditures exceed one billion dollars a day, even as economists fret over the availability of capital to pursue relatively modest economic development programs in the developing countries.

If, over the next few decades, we are to bring the power of science and technology to bear on some of the problems that we have touched on here, we must set up new institutional instrumentalities. Fortunately, there are some proven patterns that can serve us as guidelines. For example, there is the network of International Centers for Agricultural Research. This is sponsored by a consortium of 29 donor foundations, nations, and international agencies, and guided by a 13-man Technical Advisory Committee--one which has remarkably perceptive skills in achieving the proper balance of basic and applied research of unquestioned excellence. What has been done in agriculture could be done, with modifications, in addressing many other transnational problems and in opening up new areas of inquiry to disciplined thought and analysis.

Other effective, innovative examples come to mind. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna has been successfully launched by an ad hoc consortium of scientific bodies, supported by public funds, to explore new conceptual frameworks in the understanding and management of complex systems in areas such as energy, environment, water, and urban centers. This organization has been able to bring to bear--on both market and planned economies--the experience and the insights of scholars and institutions from all parts of the industrialized world.

Fertile Opportunity

There is fertile opportunity for the world scientific and technological community to institutionalize and perfect this concept of a network of interlinked centers which would address major global problems. This framework must not only include the fundamental base of understanding from which can be drawn the knowledge to manage these problems, but must also incorporate responsibility for disseminating

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this knowledge and assisting in its application in the field. A small, but increasing, fraction of the financial resources now going into the growing arms race would supply all the money needed--provided that it were wisely spent--for many years to come.

During the next few months, we should determine whether we can accomplish at least two objectives towards shouldering our international responsibilities:

• The identification, or definition, of several programmatic initiatives that the international scientific community can undertake as contributions to solving some of the critical problems of developing countries.

• The proposal of a continuing mechanism, or network of mechanisms, that would call for responsible, effective involvement of the scientific community in public affairs.

A n Unequivocal Commitment

Clearly the world is facing problems of enormous scope and complexity--problems that will require the sustained and committed contribution of men and women from virtually every sector of society. Scientists and technologists have vital supporting roles to play in this process, and it is our task to assist in its definition.

If we can even begin to attack these immense problems, then we will have made a start toward making manifest the unequivocal commitment of the scientific and technological community to human and economic progress.