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Advances in biological and medical sciences
434
Book Reviews
mankind’s real needs can be supplied in very large measure by less centralized industry on a more human scale. Roger Garrett from the University ofCaIifornia, Davis, states rather plaintively that “Good engineering produces appropriate technology”. Without saying so, he implicitly pleads for someone to define appropriate technology so that he can engineer it. Dan Whitney of the Ran&o Seco Nuclear Generating Station stoutly defends nuclear energy as the most appropriate technology available for power generation. Various other authors and discussants grind their particular axes, ranging from positions that would happily be embraced by the John Birch Society to emotional outbursts that sound somewhat to the left of Karl Marx. It would be difficult to think of a better demonstration of Father Coleman’s point. The world is becoming increasingly pluralistic, and the present metaphysics appears more nearly to be represented by “lifeboat ethics”. Beyond that point, there seems moderate (though not complete) agreement that the proper way for me to keep afloat is a legislative fix that legitimates my afloatness, irrespective of what happens to the balance of the people in the water. (One is reminded of a little fantasy of a couple of decades ago in which, to save the universe from totally coming apart, it was necessary for the U.S. Congress to enact the Law of Averages.) What seems not to have been said is a series of truisms: (1) No system of government is so good that it cannot be subverted, and none is so bad that it cannot be made to work to the benefit of all. (2) Any government that truly governs is tyrannical. The chief advantage of democracy is that it is sufficiently cumbersome that really efficient government (hence tyranny) is far more difficult than under a monarchy. (3) Laws areeither acodification ofwhat the majority is doing anyhow, or they are unenforceable. (4) Human behavior, as individuals, is virtually totally governed by individual metaphysics or, if you prefer, religion. Synthesizing these ideas, no amount of legislation will
produce the kind of world that Commoner and Schumacher recommend. A real ethical structure of sharing is required, and that can only grow out of an essentially religious conviction. It is contrary to the operative religions of most people today. (By operative religion, I mean their motivating visualization of the universe, not the particular formal religious persuasion to which they may or may not happen to donate one dollar per week.) On the other hand, an actual individual conviction of love of neighbor, at a level that led to an actual implementation of sharing, would produce an equivalent social and economic upheaval, whether it was under a Capitalist or a Socialist system. It is ironic that those who most cry out against the technological fix are so certain that the antidote is a governmental fix. Here endeth the sermon. The book provides a look into the arguments for and against one’s own preconceived notions, no matter where one stands. Those who are widely read in this area of contact between political, economic, ethical and environmental questions will meet few surprises. Those who are only now becoming interested can get an easy and lively introduction into the area. Those in some intermediate state will be frustrated at the degree to which the various speakers talk past one another; few of the participants in the second and larger symposium appear to have remembered what Commoner said, Commoner is not present to comment on the later speakers, and I half suspect that some of the speakers on the second day of the two-day symposium were not present on the first, and conversely. In a word, there is very little real confrontation of issues. Finally, that second sentence of Father Coleman’s continues to be disturbing. If in fact there is little hope for the emergence of a worldwide metaphysic, is there any hope for
Advances In Biulogkal and Ma&ml Bdaacea, edited by J. H. Lawrence, J. F. Gofman, T. L. Hayes and H. C. Mel. Academic Press, New York. Vol. 16, 1977, pp. xiii + 382.
but not universally disseminated corporate and contract reports. Not infrequently publication in the open literature, such as this journal, may lag the first publication by several years. The next level comprises a wide variety of review publications, of which more will be said later. Following that are the abstract journals, and still later the specialized bibliographies. Somewhat bracketing all of these is the relatively new invention known as the current-awareness publication, frequently made up of tables of contents of journals that frequently publish papers on a given subject. The extreme bottom layer, in rapidly developing fields, is a network of correspondence, telephone calls, and the like that grows spontaneously when the time constraints of a given field push even the fastest means of open publication. The structure thus more nearly resembles a “seven storey mountain” with a few excrescences than the simple two-layered structure of my younger days. It is not yet fashionable to cite the current awareness literature., but almost any issue of this journal can display papers whose bibliographies are predominantly from the gray literature or from the review literature, while ina partictdarly hot field it is possible to find papers in which the prevailing citation is “@ersonal communicationp’. The concept of more or less periodical books of review papers seems to have arisen about contemporary with my student days. There are actually two separate categories. One of these is properly called an “annual review”, or for that matter a “biennial review”, etc. One exampk is the annual special issue of Analytical Chemistry in which a series of authors exhaustively review a series of topics that actually repeat on a biennial basis. Thus, I know that theissue that will
Annual Review of Earth and Plauatary ScIencea, edited by F. A. Donath, F. G. Stehli and G. W. Wetherill. Annual Reviews, Inc., 4139 El Camino Way, Palo Alto, CA, Vol. 6, 1978, pp. 543. Price S17.00. The reviewer is old enough to have taken a required university course in the use of the scientific literature, one of whose aims was to prevent the researcher from devoting a disproportionate fraction of his time to reinventing the wheel. Another aim was teaching the laws of etiquette concerning the citation of prior art. We were taught that the scientific literature was divided into the primary and secondary publications, that the latter were dandy for providing access to the former, but that it was, for example, insufficient to identify the synthesis of an organic compound merely by a reference to Beilstein. After all, admirable as he was, Beilstein did not make the compound, and credit should begiven to the individual who did by citing his original paper. Both these matters have changed dramatically in the past 30yr. In the first place, literature seems to have proliferated to the point where it is not, in the opinion of most individuals, cost-effective to search for prior art. It is judged that it takes longer to discover the wheel in the library than in the laboratory. Furthermore, the simple separation of the literature into primary and secondary resources is no longer valid. The actual first publication of many discoveries occurs in something called the gray literature, the complex of widely
the world?
I persist in remaining
more hopeful
JAMES
than he.
P.
LODGE,JR.
Book Reviews
mankind’s real needs can be supplied in very large measure by less centralized industry on a more human scale. Roger Garrett from the University ofCaIifornia, Davis, states rather plaintively that “Good engineering produces appropriate technology”. Without saying so, he implicitly pleads for someone to define appropriate technology so that he can engineer it. Dan Whitney of the Ran&o Seco Nuclear Generating Station stoutly defends nuclear energy as the most appropriate technology available for power generation. Various other authors and discussants grind their particular axes, ranging from positions that would happily be embraced by the John Birch Society to emotional outbursts that sound somewhat to the left of Karl Marx. It would be difficult to think of a better demonstration of Father Coleman’s point. The world is becoming increasingly pluralistic, and the present metaphysics appears more nearly to be represented by “lifeboat ethics”. Beyond that point, there seems moderate (though not complete) agreement that the proper way for me to keep afloat is a legislative fix that legitimates my afloatness, irrespective of what happens to the balance of the people in the water. (One is reminded of a little fantasy of a couple of decades ago in which, to save the universe from totally coming apart, it was necessary for the U.S. Congress to enact the Law of Averages.) What seems not to have been said is a series of truisms: (1) No system of government is so good that it cannot be subverted, and none is so bad that it cannot be made to work to the benefit of all. (2) Any government that truly governs is tyrannical. The chief advantage of democracy is that it is sufficiently cumbersome that really efficient government (hence tyranny) is far more difficult than under a monarchy. (3) Laws areeither acodification ofwhat the majority is doing anyhow, or they are unenforceable. (4) Human behavior, as individuals, is virtually totally governed by individual metaphysics or, if you prefer, religion. Synthesizing these ideas, no amount of legislation will
produce the kind of world that Commoner and Schumacher recommend. A real ethical structure of sharing is required, and that can only grow out of an essentially religious conviction. It is contrary to the operative religions of most people today. (By operative religion, I mean their motivating visualization of the universe, not the particular formal religious persuasion to which they may or may not happen to donate one dollar per week.) On the other hand, an actual individual conviction of love of neighbor, at a level that led to an actual implementation of sharing, would produce an equivalent social and economic upheaval, whether it was under a Capitalist or a Socialist system. It is ironic that those who most cry out against the technological fix are so certain that the antidote is a governmental fix. Here endeth the sermon. The book provides a look into the arguments for and against one’s own preconceived notions, no matter where one stands. Those who are widely read in this area of contact between political, economic, ethical and environmental questions will meet few surprises. Those who are only now becoming interested can get an easy and lively introduction into the area. Those in some intermediate state will be frustrated at the degree to which the various speakers talk past one another; few of the participants in the second and larger symposium appear to have remembered what Commoner said, Commoner is not present to comment on the later speakers, and I half suspect that some of the speakers on the second day of the two-day symposium were not present on the first, and conversely. In a word, there is very little real confrontation of issues. Finally, that second sentence of Father Coleman’s continues to be disturbing. If in fact there is little hope for the emergence of a worldwide metaphysic, is there any hope for
Advances In Biulogkal and Ma&ml Bdaacea, edited by J. H. Lawrence, J. F. Gofman, T. L. Hayes and H. C. Mel. Academic Press, New York. Vol. 16, 1977, pp. xiii + 382.
but not universally disseminated corporate and contract reports. Not infrequently publication in the open literature, such as this journal, may lag the first publication by several years. The next level comprises a wide variety of review publications, of which more will be said later. Following that are the abstract journals, and still later the specialized bibliographies. Somewhat bracketing all of these is the relatively new invention known as the current-awareness publication, frequently made up of tables of contents of journals that frequently publish papers on a given subject. The extreme bottom layer, in rapidly developing fields, is a network of correspondence, telephone calls, and the like that grows spontaneously when the time constraints of a given field push even the fastest means of open publication. The structure thus more nearly resembles a “seven storey mountain” with a few excrescences than the simple two-layered structure of my younger days. It is not yet fashionable to cite the current awareness literature., but almost any issue of this journal can display papers whose bibliographies are predominantly from the gray literature or from the review literature, while ina partictdarly hot field it is possible to find papers in which the prevailing citation is “@ersonal communicationp’. The concept of more or less periodical books of review papers seems to have arisen about contemporary with my student days. There are actually two separate categories. One of these is properly called an “annual review”, or for that matter a “biennial review”, etc. One exampk is the annual special issue of Analytical Chemistry in which a series of authors exhaustively review a series of topics that actually repeat on a biennial basis. Thus, I know that theissue that will
Annual Review of Earth and Plauatary ScIencea, edited by F. A. Donath, F. G. Stehli and G. W. Wetherill. Annual Reviews, Inc., 4139 El Camino Way, Palo Alto, CA, Vol. 6, 1978, pp. 543. Price S17.00. The reviewer is old enough to have taken a required university course in the use of the scientific literature, one of whose aims was to prevent the researcher from devoting a disproportionate fraction of his time to reinventing the wheel. Another aim was teaching the laws of etiquette concerning the citation of prior art. We were taught that the scientific literature was divided into the primary and secondary publications, that the latter were dandy for providing access to the former, but that it was, for example, insufficient to identify the synthesis of an organic compound merely by a reference to Beilstein. After all, admirable as he was, Beilstein did not make the compound, and credit should begiven to the individual who did by citing his original paper. Both these matters have changed dramatically in the past 30yr. In the first place, literature seems to have proliferated to the point where it is not, in the opinion of most individuals, cost-effective to search for prior art. It is judged that it takes longer to discover the wheel in the library than in the laboratory. Furthermore, the simple separation of the literature into primary and secondary resources is no longer valid. The actual first publication of many discoveries occurs in something called the gray literature, the complex of widely
the world?
I persist in remaining
more hopeful
JAMES
than he.
P.
LODGE,JR.