3 nae ras irate ee 6 Now, I think I ought to tell you that lL have a secret weapon, If [ get caught in an argument and find that fam being worsted-and this does happen sometimes—then Ltirn to my opponent and Ll ask him in the nicest voice, "Now, would ycu mind repeating your basic aasumptions?" It's surprising howfewof them will remember what their basic assumptions were. Sol usually have them at that point. But L ought to confess also that one of my basic assumptions is that nature is all of one piece, and that with the mass of fragments of information rouring in from all the research outposts on the periphery of knowledge, it's going to become increasingly necessary for us ta put time and energy into the re-integration of these fragments of information into meaningful wholes, meaningful in the sense that these wholes will have some bearing on the problems that mankind is faced with, whether in the sciences or in the social sohere or in artistic areas, also. This re-integration, to be meaningful, must be multidisciplined, I think that | might confess that [ believe very deeply that the whole advance of science and of civilization requires an entirely different a level of effort, TIS ye Be yeaa?1 it, ‘ - Leape Face Beas iron eae ge ve a tice na hated Sabena wineer) 14 11gp ay ¢ DASA 2019-2 time, and thought on communication, and especially on the inalti-disciplined cormmunication, and we're not organised for it. There are a few other conferences run along these lines but they _are very few aad far between, and itis celatively a srnalk amount of intensive cross-disciplined conimunication that takes place either in our universities, in our federal agencies, or what have you. Imay have given the following illustration at the last conference, but if you don’t mind [fl give it again. At the White House Conference on Education three years ago, I think, John Gardner was the chairman. I think it was just before he was made Secretary of Health, Education and Wellare. In fact, samebody said that he was made Secretary because he did so well at this conference. Anyway, at this conference on education, Dr. Gardner begged the conferees, the several hundred that were there~—and I wasn't there—to take, as he put it, big barracuda bites of the problem of education because it was in such a desperate state. The reporter who wrote this up in the Saturday Reviewsaid that although some such interactions, vigorous interactions, on the problem may have taken place in the corridors, the community of educators was apparently not organized to enter into this kind of interchange, and that the White House Conference itself seemed to be much more like a game ot golf in which each pergon continued to hit his own ball, as opposed to the game of tennis in which the ball is tossed back and forth across the net.