Biological Future of Man 
without convention which may have wider interest, as it may 
also motivate greater investment in the technology of mes- 
sage transmission. 
The content of the communication has been least thought 
about. It might be the greatest help to understanding our own 
philosophy. How should we epitomize ourselves in telling our 
story to others? I do not doubt we should describe DNA and 
proteins, possibly the most arbitrary and unpredictable con- 
sequences of cosmic evolution. Technically, the periodic table 
of the elements would be easy to encode, and would establish 
chemistry as a context of discourse. But what then? As our 
presence at this symposium witnesses, man 1s a communicative 
animal and it may be some comfort to offer this instinct an 
infinite challenge. 
One prospect may be alarming—that we receive messages 
that betray our own scientific backwardness. What could erode 
scientific creativity, so dependent on the delusion of something 
new under the sun, more than the knowledge that everything 
is already known but only our access to the oracle is imperfect 
and costly? 
The topic of our symposium warrants other insights, the 
style and allegorical licenses of the artist; the verifiable statements 
that any scientist might make in predicting man’s biological 
future are probably vacuous. I have been alarmed about my 
own credentials, which should include responsible appreciation 
of the relevant science. I could reassure myself that it would be 
the utmost of human capacity to assimilate a fraction of what 
others have already said on the same issues, that I was setting 
myself an impossible task to achieve any novelty of concept or 
statement. But in acquiescing to this fact do we not now see 
another image of man’s biological future, his future as a 
scientist ? 
Today some scientists succeed in assuring themselves of 
currency in their investigative work, partly through self-delu- 
sion, partly through choice of narrowly delimited fields, partly 
through arrogant but sometimes justifiable assumptions about 
the incompetence of most of their colleagues, whose papers may 
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