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As Director of the
Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush
has coördinated the activities of some six thousand leading
American scientists in the application of science to warfare.
In this significant article he holds up an incentive for scientists
when the fighting has ceased. He urges that men of science should
then turn to the massive task of making more accessible our bewildering
store of knowledge. For many years inventions have extended man's
physical powers rather than the powers of his mind. Trip hammers
that multiply the fists, microscopes that sharpen the eye, and
engines of destruction and detection are new results, but the
end results, of modern science. Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments
are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access
to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages. The
perfection of these pacific instruments should be the first objective
of our scientists as they emerge from their war work. Like Emerson's
famous address of 1837 on ``The American Scholar,'' this paper
by Dr. Bush calls for a new relationship between thinking man
and the sum of our knowledge. The Editor |
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