THE PARADOX OF CHOICE 



the way to Bacon's paradoxical goal of the man who as "the 

 conqueror and the subduer of necessities'' is not the inventor, 

 but one who is "kindling a light in Nature." They include such 

 things as having development and engineering clearly separate 

 from, but near to, research, in easing in all possible ways for 

 rapid communication between these areas, and among the re- 

 search people themselves, and many other systems which are 

 nowadays well known, or at least well discussed. 



However, there must also be things far deeper than these 

 institutional and administrative conveniences. These things 



O 



must affect the very culture of the scholar and basic researcher. 

 In order to consider them, we must next think of the conditions 

 in human affairs under which basic scientific research has 

 evolved. We should discuss a bit the relation of the highly per- 

 sonalized intellect noted above to human values and to human 

 wants generally. After some thought on that, we shall try to 

 propose some ways in which the institutions of society, having 

 definite needs and aims for the use of science, can nevertheless 

 provide conditions of choice highly favorable to the success and 

 satisfaction of the individual scientist. But even the pressure to 

 make such choice has been relatively slow in coming. The ask- 

 ing of society for basic research has, of course, been until 

 now minuscule (or less?). Indeed, the trivial interest of civiliza- 

 tion at large in basic scientific research is sometimes hard to 

 realize in the technical frenzy of our present time. Perhaps it 

 takes the detachment of the philosopher to remind us scientists 

 of where we really stand in human affairs. George Santayana 

 said: 



Science . . . has flourished only twice in recorded times, once 

 for some 300 years in ancient Greece (when its life was "brilliant 

 but ineffectual"), and again for about the same period in modern 

 Christendom. Its fruits have only begun to appear, the lands it is 

 discovering have not yet been circumnavigated and there is no 



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