THE STATE OF SCIENCE! 
By Karu T. Compton 
Chairman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation 
As I contemplated the task of preparing for this occasion an evalua- 
tion of science at the midcentury, I quickly came to a conviction 
which became more firmly established as I proceeded, and which I 
shall now demonstrate to you. It is that I am inadequate for the 
task. I am reminded, by analogy, of the Negro sprinter who when 
complimented on his running of 100 yards in 9% seconds, replied: 
“T could run that race in 9 seconds if it wasn’t for the longness of the 
distance and the shortness of the time.’? I am handicapped by the 
bigness of the subject and my incapacity to do it justice. 
Were I a Man from Mars, visiting our planet 4 la Orson Welles, 
I should have certain advantages. In the first place I should un- 
doubtedly be very intelligent, else I could not have contrived to make 
the journey and to land safely. In the second place I could view this 
earthly scene objectively. For the attempt to stand off, in time or 
space, and survey objectively our accomplishments and our short- 
comings is a difficult one. Our sincerest efforts toward objectivity 
are unconsciously colored, not only by our own convictions and 
philosophy, but by those fields to which we have allied ourselves, so 
that the statesman tends to view everything first as a political prob- 
lem; the priest, as a spiritual one; the economist, as a social one; and 
the scientist, as a problem for his laboratory. Nor am I, as we shall 
see later, an exception to this rule. 
But for the moment, let us look at the world through the eyes of 
the Man from Mars. This, his latest invasion, is timed for the round- 
ing of the midcentury, an accounting time when one tends to review 
the past for the progress made to date and to contemplate the future 
speculatively as to what may lie ahead. 
Let us suppose our Martian had prepared himself for his trip by a 
study of history. He would first of all be struck by the long existence 
of the earth itself as a physical entity in contrast to the brief span of 
time in which man has played a significant role, an estimated 2 to 3 
billions of years for the earth, and a brief million and a half for man. 
1 Reprinted by permission from The Technology Review, May 1949, edited at the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology. 
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