112 COSMOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY 



science the endeavor to prepare a nitrogen mustard with superior 

 properties as a chemotherapeutic agent and as pure science some 

 general study of cell metabolism. The second project is perhaps more 

 likely to yield results of interest to science, but either may do so and 

 neither may do so. The first project is more likely to proceed under 

 constraint, but in both cases constraint to a rigid program set down 

 at the outset sharply reduces the chances that scientifically important 

 results will be obtained. Trotter properly emphasizes that: 



Great discoveries will . . . continue to be unexpected and the ad- 

 vance of science occur on an irregular front in which the salients 

 mark the places where amongst the facts the going is good. Even re- 

 search deliberately directed against short-range targets is apt to be 

 held up contrary to all reasonable expectation or to score its successes 

 through unintentional deflections. i 



Emphasis on science immediately applicable to the problems of 

 technology necessarily diverts support, and men, from the kind of 

 science that— following to their unexpected ends lines of research 

 having little or no apparent relevance to current technologic prob- 

 lems and practice— leads ultimately to complete reconstruction of the 

 technologic horizon. The utterly unprecedented dynamism today 

 displayed by science and technology is founded on the fully devel- 

 oped symbiotic interaction between them. This interaction ensures 

 that any loss to science will be a loss felt also by technology, and the 

 dynamism ensures only that the loss will be felt sooner rather than 

 later. An understandable concern for national security may suggest 

 the desirability of secrecy imposed to protect the scientific discovery 

 made the year before last, or constraint imposed to secure the fullest 

 possible exploitation of last year's technologic triumph. But in the 

 present dynamic situation these policies are completely self-defeating 

 if as a result science does not this year arrive at the basis of what will 

 become next year's technology. Even the "purest" scientist is not 

 unmindful of the possibility of such advances. If, as science develops 

 under its own internal dynamics, he can grasp the possibility of some 

 previously impossible resolution of an urgent technologic need or 

 problem— then there await him fame and money; beyond such 

 "sordid gain," perhaps the satisfaction of the benefactor of his com- 

 munity; and always the prospect that, through technologic exploita- 

 tion of his science, his materials and tools will be returned to him a 



