The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

If the several examinations here of the species Scientist (his habits, habitat, habiliments) seem less than conclusive, it may be due to a sort of “atmosphere problem.”

The astronomer, evaluating star spectrograms, must make allowance for the known composition of the intervening atmosphere. The thicker the atmosphere, or the more unknown elements in it, the less accurate will be the analysis; observatories are built on high ground, away from city smog and smoke. In addition, the less similar the subject of study, the more alien it is to the native atmosphere, the more accurate will the analysis be.

The atmosphere in which we observe each other is murky, to say the least. In an article in the Saturday Review last year, Robert Graves delivered himself of much unhappiness, after spending two weeks as a guest on the M.I.T. campus. “It is politely assumed here that scientists have souls as well as minds,” says Mr. Graves, expressing his disapproval of the new chapel. “But what modern scientist has ever learned the technique of meditation?” Meanwhile, the distinguished editor of the Worm Runner’s Digest, and chief of the Planaria Research Group, Professor James V. McConnell, in a speech to the American Psychological Association, attacked the “humanistic value system” in the teaching of psychology with at least as much enthusiasm as Robert Graves generated against his image of the scientist. “Our reaction to the word humanism is a powerful, non-logical, gut reaction. Did Pavlov’s dogs stop to ask why the dinner bell had such a pleasant sound? No, the dogs merely salivated each time the bell was rung, much as humans unthinkingly ‘light up with an inner glow’ whenever someone extolls the merits of the humanistic approach.” But, he adds, “if humanism is nothing but an arbitrary set of values we accept chiefly because we’ve been trained to do so, what about science? Is it something different, something better? The truth is of course, that science, too, is a way of life, a set of mores and values that our society in general tends to venerate (at least in principle) much as it Venerates humanism.”

Having made the admission. Dr. McConnell unfortunately proceeded to ignore its implications in the remainder of his address. But all this meant was that it was true, and the significant truth had been stated long before:

No man is an island. When we look at each other—white and Negro, male and female, child and adult. Communist and Bircher, scientist and humanist—no matter what labels we pin on ourselves, we look to some extent into a mirror. Creators and creations both, each of us is part of the total culture and environment in which we meet and observe each other. Whether we will someday meet an intelligent alien enough to be accurately observed, remains to be seen. For now, perhaps we had best just accept the existence of the scientist, the engineer, and even the TV technician, as inalienable parts of our society. We may then, instead of trying to isolate components, begin upon the useful study of (take your choice; take both) scientific humanity and human science.