92 COSMOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY 



situation today is entirely diflFerent and— if the funds given science 

 with intent to benefit technology continue as abundant as they have 

 become in the last twenty years— some early and drastic reorganiza- 

 tion of the whole pattern of scientific endeavor seems well nigh 

 inevitable. 



Cosmology 



The microcosmic life cycle of the liver fluke is, in the hands of a 

 Sherrington, a subject as fit for cosmologic thought as the macrocos- 

 mic evolution of the spiral nebulae. More than inquiry into the 

 wholeness of the universe, cosmology is the search for answers, and 

 the answers given, to questions concerning the "real nature" of the 

 world and of man, and even concerning the "reason" or "value" of the 

 world and of man. Each scientist entertains a cosmology he does not, 

 and perhaps cannot, wholly distinguish from his science. That im- 

 portant distinction is, however, often possible for the onlooker alert 

 to four traits that characterize cosmology. 



Inclusiveness. No concern of science, the "meaning" of human ex- 

 istence cannot but concern cosmology. Purporting itself a world 

 view, cosmology (a "branch of metaphysics," according to Webster) 

 must take in much that science rejects as unfit for its consideration. 



Science metamorphosed. Quite differently incorporated in different 

 cosmologies, science is there always metamorphosed in a fashion 

 highly distinctive of cosmology. The concept "atom" (or "energy"), 

 a useful tool of scientific thought, becomes then the "real stuff of 

 which the universe is made." What have been found in science "sug- 

 gestive" analogies, "permissible" principles, "sufficient" theories, "eflB- 

 cient" laws, and "appropriate" concepts are by the cosmologist all 

 seen as "truths." A law known highly reliable is confidently assumed 

 exact; known to be of great generality, it is confidently assumed uni- 

 versally applicable. As Bridgman notes, so much is true even in 

 "purely scientific" cosmogony: 



To me the most striking thing about cosmogony is the perfectly hair- 

 raising extrapolations which it is necessary to make. We have to ex- 

 tend to times of the order of lO^"^ years and distances of the order of 

 10^ light years laws which have been checked in a range of not more 

 than 3 X 10- years, and certainly in distances not greater than the dis- 

 tance which the solar system has traveled in that time, or about 



