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RUSSIA WAS FIRST  |
Yuri Gagarin's space flight was not only a magnificent achievement of modern science, but a geo-political victory for the Soviets which poses some very urgent problems for the U.S. As President Kennedy said to the space experts with whom he discussed what to do next, "There's nothing more important." If this is a race, do we want to catch up? What's wrong with Mercury and our other lagging programs? Should we change our established priorities in favor of some great leapfrog effort? At what cost? Must we r eally (as one scientist testified last week) get up $25-$40 billion to speed an American to the moon? What is our national space objective: survival, knowledge, or prestige? The answers to these and similar questions are indeed urgent. Kennedy has some ve ry complex command decisions to make in the next few months. But even after they are all answered, an older question will remain. It is a question that has haunted the Western world at least since the first successful atomic test at Alamogordo, N. Mex; indeed it goes back to Edison, to Descartes and to Newton. It i s the question of the role of science in the organized life of mankind. For the Soviets, this question does not exist. They answered it long ago by making science their god. Despite the wholly unscientific character of their political dogmas, they look to science as the chief tool and ultimate vindication of their system. It is a science-oriented system. Thus there is an eerie element of truth in Krushchev's wild boast that Gagarin's flight "contains a new triumph of Lenin's ideas, a confirmation of the correctness of Marxist-Leninst teaching." Gagarin, too, gave the credit t o "our own Communist party," the vanguard on the "great road to penetrating the secrets of nature." Science is no nation's private property. It has been very kind to America, and vice versa. Americans will always delight in the marvels of science and respect its usefulness in the quest for truth. But our technological supremacy, which the Russians have now outstripped in space, has been a by-product of our free society, never its god or goal. The only test used in a scientific society - does it work? - has not been the sole test of our national endeavors, though they have met this test. In our current d iscomfiture, and our haste to meet the Soviet challenge, we should not let this fundamental question of science's role go by default. The space adventure is of such huge proportions, and its effects can be so pervasive, that technocracy (a broader word for what the Soviets live under) could overtake us while we overtake them. There are ways to live in a scientific age, and to maintain s cience as the servant of human freedom, without worshiping it or letting it organize our whole lives. But the way will not be found by pretending that the technocratic challenge, and the Orwellian danger, are not real. What role do Americans really want s cience to play in their lives? A greater role than now? A central role? What? |
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