43 O READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



largely education by dictation. It is indoctrination rather than education 

 by understanding the why and wherefore through experimentation. This 

 applies to countries other than our own. There are those in our own coun- 

 try who insist all along the line on education by more and more dictation 

 and indoctrination. Merely the memory of and the ability to repeat a 

 heterogeneous number of facts, or even coordinated facts discovered by 

 science, is not education in the method of science. We can teach a parrot 

 to talk Latin and repeat a syllogism, but that Latin-speaking bird is still a 

 parrot. 



(2) Considerable responsibility for the failure of science essentially to 

 modify human conduct must be laid to the scientists themselves. Many of 

 us are scientists only during our working hours, and fall into the common 

 errors of the average man when we step outside our own specific field. 

 Many of us have considerable fog in our brains and clay in our feet, and 

 this is discerned by leaders in other human endeavors, and by the man in 

 the street. Scientists frequently become dogmatic both inside and outside 

 of their own fields, and it may therefore legitimately be asked: if the very 

 high-priests of science thus fail to be influenced by the spirit and method 

 of science, what hope can there be for the rank and file? 



(3) The third factor is the tremendous resistance of man to new ways 

 of thinking and new ways of life. During the past million years that man 

 has evolved under the influence of the non-scientific or raw environment, 

 he has developed emotions and habits and drives that are not easily, speed- 

 ily, or permanently modified by the environments and techniques de- 

 veloped by man himself through science. There is no use crying over this 

 situation. It is one of the recognized scientific facts, and we must accord- 

 ingly work toward the goal with longer vision and greater tolerance and 

 patience. Science as an educational and social force is but of yesterday. 

 Man has been exposed for ages to the fundamental ethics of the great re- 

 ligions, using the elements of fear, punishment, and perpetual reward as mo- 

 tives, something that science cannot do. And yet the effects of this exposure 

 seem neither significant nor lasting. 



From all the evidence now available it seems clear that in the past greed, 

 guile, and violence had survival value for primitive man. Assuming that 

 these drives can be curbed on a national and international scale by the new 

 mores based on understanding, reason, and emerging justice, will the latter 

 have equal survival value in and for the kind of society we hope to build? 

 My answer is yes, with this proviso: I think we must apply new and dif- 

 ferent measures to reduce the number of the antisocial, the less fit. We have 

 enough information to make a beginning in that direction now, but preva- 

 lent mores prevent it. Unless reason based on understanding effectively 

 guides social evolution of tomorrow in the direction of elimination or re- 

 duction in the number of the less fit, those who cannot or will not strive 

 for the individual and the common good, I see no escape from the de- 



