DISCUSSION 
over in the not very distant future, and become asymptotic 
to some sort of limit; just as the growth of cities is already 
curving over and reaching a limit beyond which they cannot 
function. Similarly if we have too many scientific discoveries 
in a given time we may not be able to assimilate them. 
Crick: One has to distinguish between knowledge reaching 
a limit and the rate of acquisition of knowledge reaching a limit. 
It is reasonable that the rate should be self-limiting, but unfor- 
tunately it is likely to reach saturation at a very high level. 
Moreover, I think that while there are competing societies 
this problem will remain. After all, one of the reasons why we 
get such support for science is because it has economic and 
political value to individual nations or groups of nations: this 
is why much of the money is made available. 
Perhaps we shall have to have a world in which we are put 
back artificially into a series of small communities which com- 
pete culturally in some way. There are also certain real problems 
in connexion with world government, and with the limitation 
of population. How are nations or social groups going to agree 
to limit their populations when one wants to grow bigger than 
another, or fears to grow smaller? 
The development of biology is going to destroy to some extent, 
our traditional grounds for ethical beliefs, and it is not easy to 
see what to put in their place. 
Price: I would like to draw some further consequences from 
the exponential growth of science!. One of the reasons why we 
are getting so much money and support for science is precisely 
because, in the well-developed countries, we are becoming 
more and more nervous simply because the curve zs bending 
over. Deceleration is already setting in and we have nearly 
attained a saturation state. What is very odd is that the later 
a country “‘takes off” into that industrial revolution, which is 
now ending in some older countries, the faster technological 
progress goes. The old scientific countries of Europe plus 
America are now very rapidly reaching the point where they 
will be producing less than fifty per cent of all scientific dis- 
coveries. Our questions should be posed not in terms of what 
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