This is in itself a trend. Many leading scientists consider it a factor as disabling to us as the nonsense of Lysenkoism is to Russian technology. Nevertheless there are clear - cut trends which are certain to make this coming era enormously more productive and interesting than the frantic one we have just passed through. Among them are:
Cybernetics: The study of communication and control of mechanisms and organisms. This includes the wonderful field of mechanical and electronic "brains" - but is not limited to it. (These "brains" are a factor in themselves that will speed up technical progress the way a war does.)
Semantics: A field which seems concerned only with definitions of words. It is not; it is a frontal attack on epistemology - that is to say, how we know what we know, a subject formerly belonging to long - haired philosophers.
New tools of mathematics and logic, such as calculus of statement, Boolean logic, morphological analysis, generalized symbology, newly invented mathematics of every sort - there is not space even to name these enormous fields, but they offer us hope in every field - medicine, social relations, biology, economics, anything.
Biochemistry: Research into the nature of protoplasm, into enzyme chemistry, viruses, etc., give hope not only that we may conquer disease, but that we may someday understand the mechanisms of life itself. Through this, and with the aid of cybernetic machines and radioactive isotopes, we may eventually acquire a rigor of chemistry. Chemistry is not a discipline today; it is a jungle. We know that chemical behavior depends on the number of orbital electrons in an atom and that physical and chemical properties follow the pattern called the Periodic Table. We don't know much else, save by cut - and - try, despite the great size and importance of the chemical industry. When chemistry becomes a discipline, mathematical chemists will design new materials, predict their properties, and tell engineers how to make them - without ever entering a laboratory. We've got a long way to go on that one!
Nucleonics: We have yet to find out what makes the atom tick. Atomic power? - yes, we'll have it, in convenient packages - when we understand the nucleus. The field of radioisotopes alone is larger than was the entire known body of science in 1900. Before we are through with these problems, we may find out how the universe is shaped and why. Not to mention enormous unknown vistas best represented by ?????
Some physicists are now using two time scales, the T - scale, and the tau - scale. Three billion years on one scale can equal an incredibly split second on the other scale - and yet both apply to you and your kitchen stove. Of such anarchy is our present state in physics.
For such reasons we must insist that the Age of Science has not yet opened.
(Still 1950) The greatest crisis facing us is not Russia, not the Atom bomb, not corruption in government, not encroaching hunger, not the morals of young. It is a crisis in the organization and accessibility of human knowledge. We own an enormous "encyclopedia" - which isn't even arranged alphabetically. Our "file cards" are spilled on the floor, nor were they ever in order. The answers we want may be buried somewhere in the heap, but it might take a lifetime to locate two already known facts, place them side by side and derive a third fact, the one we urgently need.
Call it the Crisis of the Librarian.
We need a new "specialist" who is not a specialist, but a synthesist. We need a new science to be the perfect secretary to all other sciences.
But we are not likely to get either one in a hurry and we have a powerful lot of grief before us in the meantime.
Fortunetellers can always be sure of repeat customers by predicting what the customer wants to hear... it matters not whether the prediction comes true. Contrariwise, the weatherman is often blamed for bad weather.
Brace yourself.
In 1900 the cloud on the horizon was no bigger than a man's hand - but what lay ahead was the Panic of 1907, World War I, the panic following it, the Depression, Fascism, World War II, the Atom Bomb, and Red Russia.
Today the clouds obscure the sky, and the wind that overturns the world is sighing in the distance.
The period immediately ahead will be the roughest, cruelest one in the long, hard history of mankind. It will probably include the worst World War of them all. It might even end with a war with Mars, God save the Mark! Even if we are spared that fantastic possibility, it is certain that there will be no security anywhere, save that which you dig out of your own inner spirit.
But what of that picture we drew of domestic luxury and tranquility for Mrs. Middleclass, style 2000 A.D.?
She lived through it. She survived.
Our prospects need not dismay you, not if you or your kin were at Bloody Nose Ridge, at Gettysburg - or trudged across the Plains. You and I are here because we carry the genes of uncountable ancestors who fought - and won - against death in all its forms. We're tough. We'll survive. Most of us.
We've lasted through the preliminary bouts; the main event is coming up.
But it's not for sissies.
The last thing to come fluttering out of Pandora's Box was Hope - without which men die.
The gathering wind will not destroy everything, nor will the Age of Science change everything. Long after the first star ship leaves for parts unknown, there will still be outhouses in upstate New York, there will still be steers in Texas, and - no doubt - the English will still stop for tea.
Afterthoughts, fifteen years later - (1965)
I see no reason to change any of the negative predictions which follow the numbered affirmative ones. They are all conceivably possible; they are all wildly unlikely by year 2000. Some of them are debatable if the terms are defined to suit the affirmative side - definitions of "life" and "manlike," for example. Let it stand that I am not talking about an amino acid in one case, or a machine that plays chess in the other.
Today the forerunners of synthesists are already at work in many places. Their titles may be anything; their degrees may be in anything - or they may have no degrees. Today they are called "operations researchers," or sometimes "systems development engineers," or other interim tags. But they are all interdisciplinary people, generalists, not specialists - the new Renaissance Man. The very explosion of data which forced most scholars to specialize very narrowly created the necessity which evoked this new non - specialist. So far, this "unspecialty" is in its infancy; its methodology is inchoate, the results are sometimes trivial, and no one knows how to train to become such a man. But the results are often spectacularly brilliant, too - this new man may yet save all of us.
I'm an optimist. I have great confidence in Homo sapiens.
We have rough times ahead - but when didn't we? Things have always been "tough all over." H - bombs, Communism, race riots, water shortage - all nasty problems. But not basic problems, merely current ones.
We have three basic and continuing problems: The problem of population explosion; the problem of data explosion; and the problem of government.
Population problems have a horrid way of solving themselves when they are not solved rationally; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are always saddled up and ready to ride. The data explosion is now being solved, mostly by cybernetics and electronics men rather than by librarians - and if the solutions are less than perfect, at least they are better than what
Grandpa had to work with. The problem of government has not been solved either by the "Western Democracies" or the "Peoples' Democracies," as of now. (Anyone who thinks the people of the United States have solved the problem of government is using too short a time scale.) The peoples of the world are now engaged in a long, long struggle with no end in sight, testing whether one concept works better than another; in that conflict millions have already died and it is possible that hundreds of millions will die in it before year 2000. But not all.