W. O. BAKER 



. . . what keeps the total scientific effort from being chaotic and 

 meaningless is not central planning or any attempt to achieve it, 

 but a kind of grand intellectual homeostasis, under which a mul- 

 titude of influences interact in a natural way. 



He goes on to relate this to our present position: 



Plainly our society has not yet evolved a satisfactory way of foster- 

 ing creative scholarship. 



But for emphasis we should refer once more to Professor Feyn- 

 man's thesis. He says: 



We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is 

 not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. There are tens 

 of thousands of years in the future. ... It is our responsibility to 

 leave the men of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth 

 of humanity we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth 

 for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers 

 now . . . and thus doom man for a long time to the chains of 

 authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. . . . 

 It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress and 

 great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great 

 progress that is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the 

 value of this freedom, to teach how doubt is not to be feared but 

 welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty 

 to all coming generations. 



I hope that no one will be surprised to hear that a philos- 

 ophy of ignorance is the way to live with a paradox. A proper 

 understanding by planners, leaders, voters, and thinkers of the 

 limits of knowledge and of the uncertainty of it can make the 

 definitions of goals and of the specific aims of industry, govern- 

 ment, and the public welfare acceptable to the intellectual satis- 

 factions of the basic research scientist. Thereby, highly directed 

 elements of our society like business, the military, and public 

 health agencies can easily include highly undirected research- 

 ers. Physical science has developed in comparatively recent 



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