Special Lecture
29 December, morning and afternoon.
Speaker: Herman Kahn (Director, Hudson Institute).
Speculations on the Next Thirty-three Years.
Among the important respects in which industrial so-
ciety differs from all the societies that went before are
the unprecedented degree of affluence, the extraordinary
development of technology, and the institutionalization of
secular, manipulative rationality, and thus of further eco-
nomic and technological development. These basic trends
of Western society can be seen as part of a common,
complex trend of interacting elements—most of which can
be traced back as far as the 12th or 11th centuries.
For analytic purposes, we have separated them into 13
rubrics.
These processes of change, each facilitating the other,
have become routinely—one might even say inexorably—
cumulative. It is notorious that as a result the rate of
change of many aspects of economic and social life has
become exponential; and it is not likely that many of
the changes that are in process will begin to decelerate
during the next third of a century. Some of these trends
present serious issues; indeed some of the problems created
by our successes in achieving unprecedented kinds of
economic and technological powers may even be overwhelming. An attempt will be made to present a general
framework designed to facilitate speculation and discussion
about both the opportunities and the dangers that seem
likely to arise in the next 33 years.
Panel Discussion. Philip M. Hauser, Chairman
Daniel Bell (Professor of Sociology, Columbia).
Harrison Brown (Professor of Geochemistry, California
Institute of Technology).
Walter Sullivan (Science Editor, The New York Times).
Hans H. Landsberg (Resources for the Future, Inc.,
Washington, D.C.).
Scientific Research Society of America (RESA)
Annual Address and Procter Prize
29 December, afternoon.
Speaker: Abel Wolman (Professor of Sanitary Engineering
Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University)
Environmental Pollution.
In the last five years Federal, State and regional legis-
lation have vied with abatement in a push toward upgrading the quality of the air. In the haste toward action, it is
not surprising that objective evaluation of the impact of all
measures has fallen well behind desires and hopes. It is
now timely and desirable to take a look at biologic, eco-
nomic, scientific, technologic, and administrative consequences of the activities stressed by legislative action and
public opinion. Such an orderly appraisal is obviously difficult, but at least a preliminary approach to an assessment
seems about due.
Chauncey Starr, Philip H. Abelson, E. J. Cassell, John
R. Goldsmith, and B. Weinstock.
General Lecture
29 December, afternoon.
Speaker: B. F. Skinner (Harvard University).
Teaching Science in High School—What Is Wrong?
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Fewer and fewer students go to college planning to become scientists and of those who go, more change t6
other fields. Perhaps science has become harder to teach.
The status and role of the scientist may have changed.
But another possibility is that those concerned with the
improvement of teaching have not made sufficient use of
recent advances in educational technology. Classroom experience is still accepted as a major source of wisdom.
Consequences will be analyzed. The teacher who tries to
make his subject interesting to the beginning student, for
example, may not prepare him for the kind of thing which
interests the informed scientist. The teacher who encourages the student to discover science for himself may
neglect to transmit what is already known. The scientific
analysis of learning and teaching has been neglected in
spite of the fact that scientists above all others should
turn to it for help.
Sigma Xi-Phi Beta Kappa Lecture
29 December, evening.
Speaker: John A, Wheeler (Princeton University).
Our Universe: The Known and the Unknown.
The formation of new stars and the explosion of old
stars and the greatest variety of events, gigantic in scale
and in energy, make the universe incomparably more interesting than any fireworks display that anyone could
imagine in his wildest dreams. However, in all this wealth
of events not one single effect has been discovered which
has led to a new law of physics, and not one single finding
has ever been obtained which is generally recognized to
be incompatible with existing law. On the contrary, Einstein’s relativity and the quantum principle and the lesser
laws together predict astonishing events—some of them
like the expansion of the universe already observed and
others on “the most-wanted list” of many present-day
investigators. Among these are the “missing matter” predicted to be present by Einstein’s theory and the “black
holes” predicted to result from the “continued gravitational collapse” of an over-compact mass. No prediction
of standard well-established theory is more revolutionary
than “superspace,” the dynamical arena of Einstein’s general relativity, and none seems more likely to have consequences for all of physics, from elementary particle physics to the dynamics of the universe.
IHustrated Lecture of the National Geographic Society
30 December, evening.
Speaker: Bradford Washburn (Boston Museum of
Science).
Mapping Mount Kennedy.
The motion picture Mapping Mount Kennedy covers
the story of Dr. Washburn’s expedition to map the St.
Elias range of Canada’s Yukon Territory in 1965. This
expedition was sponsored by the National Geographic
Society and Boston’s Museum of Science, and its success
was made possible by the cooperation and assistance provided by the government of Canada. Dr. Washburn also
led the Society’s 1935 expedition which discovered the
peak named by Canada in honor of the late president
John F. Kennedy in 1964. The film includes a section on
this 1935 expedition as well as covering the first ascent
of Mount Kennedy made in March 1965.
SCIENCE, VOL. 158