| OCR Text |
Show Beeleq: Atomic Age and its Social Significance 67 philosophy which encourages every individual to believe the superiority and the invincibility of his own group, be it In an atomic age, this crumbling framework a nation or a race. of nationalism is perforce impossible if man is to survive and move forward toward the goals which are within his reach. centric in One of the most brilliant and useful formulations of that contemporary, prophet seer, but not revelator, H. G. Wells, is his famous aphorism, "History is a race between education and catastrophe." Twenty-five years agd in a brilliant essay entitled the Salvaging of Civilization. he prophesied that: "Mankind after the tragic conclusion of the great war, seems now to be drifting again towards new and probably more disastrous concussions. (9:23). Moreover, he uttered a warning, which we did not heed, when he said, "But in a world where Mars can reach out in a sinqle night and smite: a city a thousand miles away, we cannot suffer wisdom to hesitate in an inaudible gentility." (9:25,26). He went even further and challenged the members of our profession thus: "The creative responsibility for the world today passes steadily into the hands of writers and school teachers, students of social and economic science, professors and poets, editors and journalists, publishers and newspaper proprietors, preachers, every sort of propagandist and every sort of disinter ested person who can give time and energy to the reconstruction of the social idea." (9: 195). What therefore becomes the "educational imperative" for the a far-flung scheme of education and training in world citizenship. We must enlarge the boundaries of our loyalties to include all men and women of good will, irrespective of race, creed, color, religion or any other social characteristic. We must find it just as easy to deal with our neighbors in the bal kans as our neighbors in Burley; to concede the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the peoples of Asia as to our neighbors in Arizona, and so on, ad infinitum. We must, at all 'costs, learn to live and work together in the new age of the atom. Literally, we must hang together or we shall be blown to smithereens separately! atomic age is The implications of the atomic age for science are most dra Little did those 16th Century pioneers in science realize the far-reaching significance of the germ idea of science when they took their stand against universal opposition and persecu tion, in favor of the principle of inductive logic and a rigid in sistence upon observation and verification as the cornerstone of scientific methodology. What, after all, is really revolutionary in our world is not so much the atomic bomb as the methodology matico .. , |
