THE INTENTIONAL SHAPING OF HUMAN OPINION 595 



began in the brain of one man finally reached the masses of 

 the population. 



The story, of course, thus briefly sketched, was far 

 from brief in its unrolling. Nor was its unrolling quite as 

 smooth as we have seemed to indicate. But in the end 

 Galileo's challenge won. Hated in his time by the priests 

 and the academic traditionalists, forced even to recant, his 

 fundamental idea now rules so securely that any thought of 

 going back to the attitudes and procedures of his tormentors 

 is completely out of the question. 



CAN SCIENTIFIC-MINDEDNESS BECOME THE GOVERNING 

 THOUGHT IN OUR WORLD OF SOCIAL VALUES? 



I have chosen this example for the reason that if one were 

 asked what idea-habit most needs to be developed in the 

 modern world the answer, it seems to me, would run some- 

 thing as follows: In the physical world, Galileo and his suc- 

 cessors have won; in the world of individual and social values, 

 they still remain largely defeated. And the question forces 

 itself, can the type of thinking which has so powerfully 

 transformed our physical world become the ruling type of 

 thinking in our world of human values? We need not 

 elaborate upon the comparative rarity of scientific-mindedness 

 in matters political, economic and social. The question 

 which needs answering is, what can be done to generate 

 scientific-mindedness in these deplorably unscientized 

 regions? Can the modern world deliberately set itself to 

 building a Galilean habit of thought in the social as well as 

 the physical areas of its life? 



The answers usually given to this question are fairly 

 discouraging. How, it is said, can we ever expect a newspaper- 

 fed, movie-debauched, prejudice-ridden mass of people to 

 regard all human questions with the detachment and the 

 generous all-roundness of the scientific mind? The thing 

 seems inconceivable. And yet is it so? May it not be that in 

 this matter, as in the case of Galileo, the mills of the gods 

 grind slowly, but they do somehow grind? 



It seems worthwhile to go back to our first fundamental. 

 There was Galileo, the individual thinker. But more than 

 that there was Galileo the experimenter. This, it seems to me, 



