THE PARADOX OF CHOICE 



sonal satisfaction. Why should those devoted to basic research 

 feel that they should even consider associating their work with 

 enterprises devoted to specific useful, social, and economic ends? 

 There are many immediate responses to such a query. 

 They appear in the newspapers every day, purporting to show, 

 for example, the responsibility of basic scientific research in re- 

 lieving suffering by the conquest of diesase. But what about the 

 suffering caused by overpopulation of the earth and the indis- 

 criminate prolonging of the life span in an organism apparently 

 ill-designed to integrate full faculties much beyond a few score 

 years of life? Too, basic scientific research is exhorted to provide 

 for the national security by the creation of more "perfect" 

 weapons. But what about the failure of strong weapons to keep 

 the peace in ages past and the dreadful suffering that the war- 

 ring of man has caused right up to now? One of the more 

 touching of these endless expressions of what the basic scientific 

 researcher could do for the benefit of mankind, if he would only 

 try, appeared in a statement a few months ago by the head of 

 one of the important industrial associations in America. It was 

 to provide "transoceanic television beamed from the earth and 

 relayed across the sea from an anchored space satellite." Should 

 even the heroic challenge of anchoring a space satellite be 

 enough to make the scientist capable of basic research accept 

 at face value the great needs that civilization says it has for 

 him? I should think that fundamentally he could look for some- 

 thing more. 



Prospective Relations of the 

 Scientist to Society 



An important issue for our subject here is that he may 

 very well find more. He may find it in a basic spiritual and in- 

 tellectual coupling of scientific research with our highest human 

 values. A few scientists, including some at this meeting, have 



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