THE NEED FOR NEW KNOWLEDGE 



is the only principle; for by far the most usual way of handling 

 phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrange- 

 ment of our preconception is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse 

 those who bear witness for them. 



Why, then, do we seek new knowledge, and ask for die 

 help of others in enabling us to acquire it? To this question 

 there is not one answer; there are two. They are disturbingly 

 unrelated. Each answer, in turn, in this mid-twentieth century, 

 in our time and country, poses a set of problems that man has 

 never faced before. To these I must return. 



One answer is that new knowledge is useful; the other 

 answer is that the getting of it is ennobling. Indeed it is en- 

 nobling, as anyone who has spent his life, or an honest part of 

 it, in studying nature can attest. Science today, the study of 

 nature and of man as part of nature, is continuous, despite all 

 that makes it unique in scope, brilliance, and virtuosity, with 

 the long tradition of attempting to comprehend our situation in 

 the world and the world in which we live. The revelation of 

 new and unexpected wonders, the gradual emergence of great 

 architectonic traits of order, the harmony of a world free of in- 

 consistency widen us as men and give us a sense of beauty 

 which is both vast and robust. Repeated discovery that what 

 we took for firm truths are conditional ones, limited by the 

 limitation or poverty of our past experience, gives to this enter- 

 prise a quality at once modest and vigorous. We do not argue 

 these matters, or even speak much about them; but in them 

 is rooted the commitment to science of those who practice it; 

 by their example, by the lives and works of men of science, 

 we judge its weight and depth. 



Clearly these brave words give an odd and incomplete 

 description of the immense activity which is contemporary 

 science, even in its purest sense, as the disinterested study of 

 nature for the sake of knowledge. Some parts of the order of 



