Graduate Education and the Disappearance of Humanism
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Graduate Education and the Disappearance of Humanism Neal Lane This is an edited version of a talk presented at the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Workshop on Graduate and Post Doc Education held in Arlington, Virginia on June 5,1995.
In 1931, Albert Einstein said, "Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors, concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods—in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations." Einstein takes us back to our fundamental values as guidance in finding our compass heading. Science and technology are neither inherently good nor bad. Rather it is what we do with them that makes them so. Fertilizer and fuel oil are at least benign, at best beneficial, and at worst destructive. November 1989 marks the official end of the Cold War. A most interesting articulation of this moment in history appeared in the preface of a 1994 report from the National Research Council on the changing environment for the physical sciences and mathematics, "Throughout the Cold War, the nation was in a kind of metastable state with a known enemy and a strong rationale for doing research to stay ahead of that enemy. That state was nowhere near equilibrium; it was just a pause in the flow of history. With the end of the Cold War we now seem to face constant, somewhat chaotic, and confusing change.... If this argument is accepted, the transition out of the Cold War marks the resumption of historical change."1 If this is such a time—a time when the ordinary course of historical perturbations unsettles our sense of unity in the absence of a common foe, and a time that derails our rationale for doing research to stay ahead of an enemy—if this is such a time, then how do we find the right compass heading for the nation and for science, and who will lead?
In answer to these questions, Einstein would have answered that the compass heading is concern for humanity and its fate; the leaders, among others, are those very scientists and engineers, the creators of fertilizers, the makers of technology, the inventors of genetic engineering, and the magicians of superconducting materials. We abdicate our responsibilities as citizens if we as scientists and engineers do not understand our science and technology in the larger context of humanity and its "great unsolved problems." In the United States, those problems are numerous. In other parts of the globe, they are myriad. We face urban physical and social ills, the dilemma of providing jobs while technological advances and industrial downsizing shrink the demand for workers, the need to sustain the vitality of our global habitat while supporting sufficient economic growth to maintain expanding populations, and many more. An important component of graduate science education needs to be devoted to this larger context in which science and technology have such strong influence.
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