Are Science and Society Going in the Same Direction?
Leo Marx
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 8, No. 4. (Autumn, 1983), pp. 6-9.
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Sat Jun 23 16:03:32 2007
Are Science and Society Going in the
Same Direction?
Leo Marx
O n 4 and 5 April 1983 the Chicago Museum o f
Science and Industry celebrated its 50th anniversary with an invited conference titled, "Where
Are W e Going!-Critical Issues i n Science and
Technology. " This article is a slightly revised version o f Professor Marx's talk given there.-Ed.
I first took the "we" in the title of this conference
("Where are W e Going?") to refer to our society
or perhaps even to humanity, but the agenda indicates that the "we" most specifically refers to
science and technology. The implication is that
society (or humanity) is going where science and
technology are going and that the activities of
scientists and engineers in large measure will determine where all of us are going. As a cultural
historian concerned about the interplay between
science and technology on the one hand and society
(and culture) on the other, I want to call that
assumption into question. It is a dangerous mistake, I believe, to assume that what scientists
and engineers do necessarily will be the primary
determinant of where we go as a society. That
assumption is the legacy of an old, outmoded
conception of history, and I believe that scientists
have an obligation to help us get rid of it as quickly
as possible.
Professor Marx i s the William R. Kenan Professor of
American Cultural History, Program i n Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, C a mbridge, M A 02139.
If the agenda of the Conference were limited
to the question "where are science and technology
going?" the answer would be obvious enough. We
have little reason to doubt that science and technology will continue to advance from triumph to
triumph as they have done at an accelerating rate
for some 400 years now. Scientists and engineers
will gain ever greater knowledge of natural processes, ever greater capacity to understand, control,
manipulate, imitate, transform, and, in general,
use the various elements of the bio-physicalchemical environment. In an impressively lucid
paper describing some of the recent achievements
of molecular science, one of the other participants
in this conference, Roald Hoffmann of Cornell
University, illustrates the remarkable expansion
of human knowledge and power which results
when scientists bring their collaborative intelligence and ingenuity to bear upon the natural environment. The tenor of Professor Hoffmann's remarks exemplifies the justifiably proud, selfassured, optimistic spirit of modern science, and
the promise it holds forth of yet more impressive
achievements in the future. However, contrary to
popular belief, there is little reason to assume
that such future achievements necessarily will
lead to the resolution of the most urgent human
problems. So far as scientific and technological
progress encourages the still widespread public
tendency to trust in a scientific-technological so-
"Chemistry in 1983," presented at the 50th Anniversary
Conference of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry,
4 April 1983.
O 1983 by the Massachusetts Inst~tuteof Technology and the President and Fellows of Hanard College. Published by John Wlley & Sons
CCC 01 62-2439/83/040006-04$01.80
Science, Technology, el Human Values, Volume 8, Issue 4, pp. 6-9 [Fall 1983)
Marx: Science and Society
lution or "fix," thereby deflecting attention from
the real character of our gravest problems, the
future promise of science and technology could
seriously impede their resolution.
To dismiss the possibility of a scientific or
technological "fix" is a commonplace of contemporary intellectual discourse, but too often the
idea is treated as if it were a single, discrete,
isolable, vulgar error-a tiny speck of bad thmking
easily removed from the public eye. Unfortunately,
the dangerous idea of a technical fix is embedded
deeply in what was, and probably still is, our
culture's dominant conception of history.
Let me convey the spirit of this compelling
ideology by citing an example from its heyday in
the mid-19th century. This is an excerpt from the
peroration of an address delivered by Daniel
Webster, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and
spokesman for the industrial interests of New
England. Widely esteemed as the nation's leading
orator, Webster was speaking at the opening of a
new railroad in New Hampshire in 1847:
It is an extraordinary era in which we live. It
is altogether new. The world has seen nothing
like it before. I will not pretend, no one can pretend, to discern the end; but every body knows
that the age is remarkable for scientific research
into the heavens, the earth, and what is beneath
the earth; and perhaps more remarkable still for
the application of this scientific research to the
pursuits of life. The ancients saw nothing like
it. The moderns have seen nothing like it till the
present generation. . . . We see the ocean navigated
and the solid land traversed by steam power, and
intelligence communicated by electricity. Truly
this is almost a miraculous era. What is before
us no one can say, what is upon us no one can
hardly realize. The progress of the age has almost
outstripped human belief; the future is known
only to Omniscience.'
The key word here is, of course, "progress." At
the time the new railroad was for Americans the
most popular embodiment of that Enlightenment
idea, and Webster, like the general public then
and now, ignored the fine distinction-so dear to
sophisticated historians-between
science and
technology. So far as he and his audience were
concerned, the scientdic and industrial revolutions
were twin aspects of the same grand enterprise:
research into the nature of nature and the application of that knowledge to the pursuits of life.
That these activities were the primary driving
force of modern history seemed obvious. And, by
7
simple extrapolation, that inference led to the
belief that progress is the essence of the collective
human enterprise; or, put differently, it led to the
belief that history is characterized above all by
the steady, cumulative, inevitable or perhaps
preordained (or at least irreversible) expansion of
human knowledge and power, and that such an
expansion may be expected to produce improvements across the entire range of human endeavor:
material, political, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual.
Although the full-blown idea of progress, as it
had been formulated by Condorcet and other Enlightenment thinkers, often had been couched in
purely secular language, Webster's capitalized
"Omniscience" ("the future is known only to
Omniscience") added a touch of &vine providence;
his tribute to science-based progress resonated with
the strain of millenial optimism characteristic of
evangelical Protestantism, the most influential
American religion of the time. Thus, the secular
belief in progress and the religious faith in the
imminence of the earthly kingdom of God, or
millenium, reinforced each other and often converged. The treacherous legacy of t h s grand, quasitheological myth of history is the lingering belief
that a causal nexus exists between progress within
science and technology and the general progress
of humanity. The assumption is that the achievements of scientists and engineers translate more
or less naturally and predictably-in the ordinary
course of events-into solutions of such grave
problems as material scarcity, the protection of
the natural environment, the extension of social
justice, and the avoidance of a catastrophic nuclear
war.
But why, one might well ask, should we bother
to rehearse this well-known story at t h s late date?
We know that the high water mark of the Victorian
faith in progress is well behind us. In the United
States it may have occurred as early as the eve
of World War I, but since Hiroshima the tide of
that faith manifestly has been ebbing.
In 1933, the year the Chicago Museum of Science
and Industry was founded, the tide was still running strong. That was the year of the Chicago
"Century of Progress" International Exposition,
whose theme was "progress through the application of science to industry." In the Exposition's
Hall of Science stood a large sculpture: A man
and woman, nearly lifesized, stretched out their
hands, "as if in fear or ignorance." Between them
stood "a huge angular robot nearly twice their
size, bending low over them, with an angular me-
8
Science, Technology, eJ Human Values-Fall
1983
tallic arm thrown reassuringly around each." In
the official Guidebook of the Fair appeared the
sobering motto "SCIENCE FINDS-INDUSTRY
APPLIES-MAN CONFORMS."~But after World
War 11, to repeat, this simple faith began to ebb
more rapidly.
The change is often revealed in the writings of
scientists, and it is poignantly revealed in the
paper by Roald Hoffmann referred to above. Until
the final three-sentence paragraph, the tone of the
paper-as Professor Hoffmann confidently predicts
the future triumphs of molecular science in understanding chemical mechanisms, in freeing us
from dependence upon fossil fuels, etc.-is almost
as exultant as Daniel Webster's. The paper exudes
trust in progress-but only progress within science.
When he turns to the crucial nexus between science and society, however, Professor Hoffmann's
tone becomes rueful, tentative, questioning, uncertain. "And in the process of attaining all that
knowledge," he asks, "will we do it without destroying our environment, our cultural heritage,
and ourselves? Will we be able to use our better
understanding of the universe to improve our life
and yet keep feeling, as man must, the eternal
forces of nature? I think we must."
Judging by these sad rhetorical questions, it is
clear that Professor Hoffmann, like most of us, no
.longer shares the old faith. But I submit that its
ghost hovers over his paper, as it does over much
of contemporary discourse about the relations
among science, technology, and society. If one
devotes more than eight pages to the inspiring
advances to be expected from molecular science
and then, in conclusion, abruptly leaps to the
need, in the process, to avoid "destroying our
environment, our cultural heritage, and ourselves,"
then the connection between the two parts-the
body of the paper and its conclusion-unavoidably
becomes problematic. What is the tacit rationale
behind that extraordinary transition? I suggest that
it is an unspoken tribute to the logical abyss in
our thinking created by the receding faith in progress. The missing connection is a vestige of the
old expectation, no longer tenable but not yet
repudiated, that in the natural course of events
thk achievements of molecular science will be
translated into social progress, ~h~~~ is a sense
in which the rhetorical structure Of Professor
Hoffmann's argument, for all his manifest lack
of faith, derives from the generous but unwarranted
of a natural, tO-be-ex~ected
of scientific progress to social progress.
I do not wish to detract from the achievements
of molecular science. But I am suggesting that
there is much less significant connection than
adherents of the progressive faith would have us
believe between our new chemical knowledge and
our ability, say, to clean up toxic waste dumps
in the United States. New knowledge of chemical
processes, like all advances in science and technology, is a potential source of power but is useless
in answering the two questions that will determine
whether we pollute our environment: Who controls the power? To what end? If the EPA is controlled by persons who attach a low priority to
the protection of the environment, then none of
the advances predicted by Professor Hoffmann is
likely to help to protect it. A banality, to be sure,
but a great many Americans cling to the old faith.
They continue to cherish the hope, for example,
that scientists and engineers will discover a solution to the nuclear dilemma-that they may
yet come up with the "ultimate" defense against
nuclear attack.
President Reagan himself illustrated t h s widely
held belief when, on 23 March 1983, he announced
that he was initiating a program aimed at "eliminating the threat posed by nuclear missiles." He
called upon "the scientific community who [sic]
gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents
to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give
us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons
impotent and ~ b s o l e t e . "The
~ approach described
in what the press quickly named President Reagan's "Star Wars" speech was an all-or-nothing
reliance upon scientific progress as the means of
ending the arms race. The President advocated a
vast new build-up of nuclear armaments until
such time as scientists and engineers devised a
sure-fire technological defense against nuclear
attack.
The only people who will have much success
in persuading the public that such a resolution
of the arms race is extremely unlikely are the
scientists and engineers themselves. They should
be the ones to say, loudly and clearly, that they
have almost no hope of devising an absolutely
Let me emphasize that the locus of the dlfficulty is a
rhetorical structure which embodies the vestiges of the old
progressive faith. Since writing this commentary I have had
an extended discussion of the issues with Roald Hoffmann,
and it seems evident that his concluding sentences had less
of the aspect of a considered judgment than a conventionalized,
almost ritual statement. As a cultural historian, however, I
would argue that this rhetorical convention embodies the
residue o r a widely held belief system or world view
Marx: Science and Society
reliable defense against nuclear weapons. AS the
heroes of the old myth, scientists and engineers
have a responsibility to repudiate that sometimes
pleasurable if misleading role. Few arguments
could be more useful today than one aimed at
persuadmg the world that science and technology,
essential as they are, cannot save us.
It is not enough, in other words, for scientists
and engineers to be skeptical about the old progressive myth. They have an obligation to help
us rid our thinking entirely of its obfuscating influence. Our ability to understand and control the
natural environment is of crucial importance, yet
it has only marginal value in the enhancement
of our ability to understand and control the social
environment. That discrepancy helps to explain
why we have made so little headway in closing
the famous gap between the "two cultures." The
diffusion of scientific and technological knowledge
is a necessary but not sufficient basis for genuine
progress. The most urgent problems on the human
9
agenda inhere in the man-made, not the natural,
environment. They are political, not scientific,
and thus scientific progress cannot be the basis
for their resolution.
Notes
1. "Opening of the Northern Railroad," remarks made
at Grafton and Lebanon, NH, The Writings and
Speeches of Daniel Webster, Volume N (1903):105117. For a detailed analysis of Webster's speech and
his reaction to the new machine technology, see
Leo Marx, The Machine i n the Garden: Technology
and the Pastoral Ideal in America (NewYork: Oxford
University Press, 19641, pp. 209-220.
2. This sculpture is described in Lowell Tozer, "A
Century of Progress, 1833-1 933: Technology's
Triumph Over Man," American Quarterly, Volume
4, Number 78 (1952).
3. The N e w York Times (24 March 1983):A20.