L. C. DUNN 



"got the jump" on us in numerous ways persuaded even reluctant 

 individualists that coordination was absolutely necessary. 



The war emergency also revealed the lack of balance which 

 obtains when science is directed by chance. Many fundamental prob- 

 lems, upon which other inquiries depended, had not been touched and 

 efforts had suddenly to be made to straighten the fiont. If this was 

 borne in upon those scientists who participated in war research, it 

 became even clearer to those who through lack of organization were 

 left out. There are now many biologists who would sacrifice their 

 cherished individualism for the sake of being identified with a great 

 national effort. They realize that the neglect, the omission almost, of 

 biology and biologists from the hastily improvised war agencies was 

 bad not only for biology and for other sciences, such as the medical 

 and agricultural sciences which depend upon biology, but for the 

 nation. Their state of mind is not improved by the reflection that, by 

 and large, the fault was their own. 



Still other changes in the attitudes of scientists are due to the 

 growing realization that research workers need to recognize the connec- 

 tion between their own special work and the general scientific structure 

 in which it will find its place and its function. It is difficult for the re- 

 search worker to envisage this larger field without inquiring too about 

 the still wider frame of society in which science operates. Many more 

 scientists than formerly now believe not only that this social awareness 

 of the men who do the work of science is needed to make a social 

 being and a citizen of the scientist, but that this is essential in the na- 

 tional interest. Those who so believe will want to face the questions 

 involved in the public support of science. 



By these paths we come to the problem itself: what public 

 policy toward science would encourage the best growth of science and 

 its use for the welfare of the people? The aims of policy must be to 

 reconcile two basic requirements, about which there is probably general 

 agreement. 



(1) Science and scientists must be free to grow and change 

 in ways determined in part by the discoveries of science itself. This is 

 the way in which science has progressed in the past — and the autonomy 

 of small groups and the feeling of freedom of the individual to follow 

 the new idea wherever it may lead are goods which must be preserved. 

 This freedom must be accepted and guarded as a matter of principle; 



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