W. O. BAKER 



As chastened, and not killed; 



As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; 



As poor, yet making many rich; 



As having nothing, and yet possessing all things. 



II Cor. 6:9, 10 



As an aside, how majestically those last two lines describe the 

 circumstances or the scholar and, further, the conditions of 

 paradox of choice for the scientist and technologist. Such a 

 condition was recognized about five hundred years ago by Roger 

 Bacon's deep insight into the meaning of science and tech- 

 nology for civilization. He wrote: 



Now among all the benefits that could be conferred upon man- 

 kind I found none so great as the discovery of new arts, endow- 

 ments and commodities for the bettering of man's life. For I saw 

 that among the crude people in primitive homes that authors of 

 inventions and discoveries were consecrated and numbered among 

 the gods. . . . 



With this high praise for the meaning of what we would now 

 call applied research and engineering, Bacon went on, how- 

 ever, to represent what has been widely accepted in ensuing 

 centuries as the pervading theme of true basic scientific re- 

 search, that is, to gain understanding. He wrote: 



But above all, if a man could succeed, not in striking out some 

 particular invention, however useful, but in kindling a light in 

 nature — a light which should in its ray rising touch and illumi- 

 nate all the border regions that confine upon the circle of our 

 present knowledge; and so spreading further and further should 

 presently disclose and bring into sight all that is most hidden and 

 secret in the world, that man (I thought) would be the benefactor 

 indeed of the human race — the propagator of man's empire over 

 the universe, the champion of the liberty, the conqueror and sub- 

 doer of necessities. 



Here it sounds, particularly in the last phrases, as though 

 Bacon had recognized not only the duality in the destiny of the 



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