Science and Public Policy: National Security 97 



dents were ever required, in this explosion of mid-century 

 scientific and technical knowledge, to seek the specific projects 

 which appeared relevant to the mission of the naval forces. 

 Rather, they were encouraged to seek the understanding of 

 principles and the grasp of basic experimental techniques. 

 And indeed, it has turned out they could recognize later, espe- 

 cially as members of both the independent and defense indus- 

 trial community, and also as prime advisors to the military 

 services and to the Federal government generally, the particu- 

 larly promising options from which, in fact, our great defense 

 systems have been derived. 



Now there may have been an element of luck in all of this, 

 perhaps the kind of fortune which reasonable and humane 

 causes deserve. But, in any case, it is a remarkable episode in 

 the progress of learning and of science. We shall try to illustrate 

 what it has meant and some of the opportimities which this 

 practice implies for the future — this practice of being able to 

 optimize the elements of a certain system by having them 

 understood by those who are deeply learned in a particular 

 phase of science. 



Incidentally, this theme of the wise use of the master-of-the- 

 particular for interpreting the elements of a system eventually 

 to be assembled by the generalist, explains a few other things 

 about our institutions and our scientific resources in these past 

 two decades. It accounts, for example, for the occasional malaise 

 or even mild agony expressed by engineers and engineering 

 groups, about how they always seem to come in late (just in time 

 to be blamed for some detailed defect), when large ne^v weapons 

 systems, space systems or indeed nuclear power generating or 

 even information handling systems are proposed for national 

 functions. The basic reason is that with the accumulation of 

 all knowledge doubling every fifteen years or so, the options 

 which must be considered in a new systems evolution have 

 rather quickly come to rest so deeply on the foimdations of 

 basic physical, mathematical and life sciences that it is quite 

 impractical for the traditional engineer to be required to set 



