1688 



plays in the relationship between ourselves end others. How do 

 technological developments help to strengthen the ties with others 

 in the free world? How do these developments divide?" ^^^ 



A further set of hearijigs by the same subcommittee in 1972 ad- 

 dressed the broader scope of "National Security Policy and the Chang- 

 ing World Power Alignment." Although these hearings ranged widely 

 over strategic, military, economic, foreign aid and development, 

 sociological, and other considerations, the theme of technological 

 impacts was never far from center stage. 



STUDIES AND HEARINGS BY HOUSE SCIENCE AND ASTRONAUTICS 



COMMITTEE 



A 10-year sequence of studies on science and technology policy by 

 the House Committee on Science and Astronautics (now Science and 

 Technolog}') culminated in 1975 in a legislative proposal for a national 

 policy — with explicit attention given to the diplomatic aspects of the 

 polic}^ — and for implementing institutions. The sequence began with 

 two contract studies by the National Academy of Sciences: Basic 

 Research and National Goals, completed in March 1965, and Applied 

 Science and Technological Progress, submitted in May 1967. The sub- 

 ject of the first study became the theme of the seventh annual meeting 

 of the committee's Advisory Panel on Science and Technology in 

 January 1966. Speakers at this 3-day seminar, including Vice President 

 Hubert H. Humphrey and Lord Snow of the United Kingdom 

 Ministry of Technology, strongly emphasized the international 

 aspects of science and technology. In January 1967 the Panel took 

 up the theme of Government, Science, and International Policy. Again 

 in 1968 the theme of the Panel was international: Applied Science 

 and the \Vorld Economy. In 1970, when the Subcommittee on Science, 

 Research, and Development addressed the question of National 

 Science Policy in an extensive set of hearings at which witnesses 

 called attention to the international aspects of U.S. science policy, 

 the strongest statement on the subject was in a letter from Charles A. 

 Lindbergh, who wrote that "the survival or the breakdown of our 

 western civilization is likely to depend on how intelligently we apply 

 its science and technology to our human environment within the 

 next decade. . . . No previous civilization has had either our knowl- 

 edge or our tools. It seems to me that in this fact we have remaining 

 some hope that we can avoid following the path of breakdown that 

 history suggests is inevitable for every civilization." ^°'' 



At the 1971 Panel meeting on International Science Policy, former 

 Congressman (and subsequently Office of Technology Assessment 

 Executive Director) Emilio Q. Daddario called attention to the co- 

 herence of the science panels around a "central question" which he 

 defined as "how science can best be employed for the benefit of all 

 mankind." He suggested, as a mechanism needed to "integrate more 

 completely our own national science activities with those of other 

 nations," a series of regional science policy committees which could 

 "develop more fully the multilateral approach to scientific coopera- 



2" Ibid., p. 1455. 



SO" Ibid., pp. 1458-1459. 



