SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY — HAFSTAD 219 



him in accord with his contribution. The dollar income curve would 

 then coincide precisely with the ability curve A. But there are many 

 other criteria society can choose to specify the income curve. In the 

 United States we originally chose to give "rate of progress" great 

 importance in our specification, and emphasized incentive, but we 

 balanced this with benefits for the underprivileged, which gave us 

 a distribution curve, according to Dickenson, something like B. The 

 Marxian criterion, on the other hand, was "From each according to 

 his ability to each according to his need." The experiment was tried, 

 as we all know, and according to reports resulted in a peaking of the 

 curve just at or barely above the subsistence level, as in curve C. 

 Clearly this represented a sharing of poverty, as Herbert Hoover has 

 so aptly phrased it. This failure of a social theory forced the Soviet 

 to adopt the "New Economic Plan," with a return to emphasis on 

 incentive to bring out the potential contributions of the able. The 

 new curve, of course, has a new specification which I am sure is in- 

 tended to maximize progress. To attain such progress, however, the 

 Communists have distorted their reward curve to some such curve 

 as D, with the mass of the population at subsistence level and a 

 pampered elite at the top. The stresses and strains thus introduced 

 into their society are only now becoming evident. 



In summary, there is a continuing divergence in point of view 

 between the sciences and the humanities. With the sciences, through 

 the mechanism of technology, being called upon to make an ever- 

 increasing contribution to a society as specified by the humanists, 

 there is serious cause for concern in the fact that the educational sys- 

 tem at the elementary and secondary levels seems to be out of step 

 from a systems-engineering point of view with the foreseeable needs 

 of such a society. The desire for "progress" cannot be reconciled 

 with the lack of attention to, and an incentive for, students of ex- 

 ceptional ability. Similarly the desire for "progress" is inconsistent 

 with the trend toward effortless education, and the substitution of 

 pastimes for disciplines. Finally, the assumption that a larger and 

 larger population can be supported on and by the work of a smaller 

 and smaller fraction of highly trained creative specialists leads to a 

 social structure like that of an inverted pyramid. Even more acute 

 than the current shortage of scientists and engineers is the shortage 

 of people who both can and will carry responsibility. 



With increasing complexity and specialization in the technical 

 fields, the gap between the sciences and the humanities becomes an 

 ever-widening one. This adverse tendency could be reduced by in- 

 suring that students of science were given a better grounding in the 

 humanities, while students in the humanities were given a better 

 background in science. This, however, would require more rather 



