138 SCIENTIST 



much of the division and hostihty that have character- 

 ized other aspects of human behavior. Such questions as 

 whether God exists in three parts or only in one, whether 

 kings rule by Divine Right or by the will of the people, 

 whether Praxiteles was a better sculptor than Jacob Ep- 

 stein, or Marx a better philosopher than Aristotle, are 

 simply set aside as unanswerable with available methods. 

 This procedure not only saves a great deal of time and 

 effort, it ensures that the personal relationships between 

 scientists are on the whole more cordial than those between 

 economists, politicians, philosophers, and religious leaders. 

 The basic understanding among scientists means that 

 the individual scientist is Hkely to have friends all over 

 the world. Often these friendships arise through corre- 

 spondence about a given problem on which work is going 

 forward in several different countries. This correspond- 

 ence, in turn, leads to face-to-face contacts at international 

 meetings or to an invitation to work in a foreign labora- 

 tory. The importance of such interchanges for the progress 

 of science is now widely recognized, and funds are generally 

 available for traveling fellowships. Indeed, the good scien- 

 tist is likely to be as well traveled a person as anyone ex- 

 cept a modern Secretary of State. Unlike Secretaries of 

 State, however, the scientist is almost always assured of the 

 warmest sort of reception and the most open sort of inter- 

 change of ideas when he reaches his destination. Indeed 

 the universahty of science is perhaps no more convincingly 

 illustrated than by the warm welcome received by Western 

 scientists traveling behind the Iron Curtain. In spite of 

 the fact that Communist political leaders have tried to en- 

 force certain doctrinaire attitudes on the practice of science, 

 the great majority of Soviet scientists have resisted the 

 attack and speak a language easily understood by their 

 Western colleagues. It is both a deep personal satisfaction 



