CAN A SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY BE STABLE?

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26039, 16 February 1950, Page 4

CAN A SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY BE STABLE?

WORLD GOVERNMENT

Printed below is a summary of the Lloyd Roberts Lecture given to the Rcval Society of Medicine, London, last November by Earl Russell*(Bertrand Russell, the famous philosopher) whose lecture was entitled “Can a Scientific Society be Stable? /

Earl Russell explained that he called a society “scientific” in the degree to which scientific knowledge and technique based on that knowledge affected its daily life, its economics, and its political organisation. ♦ The word “stable” he 1 used as it is used in physics. Science, as pure knowledge, began about 2500 years ago, he said, but as a force affecting daily life it began much later—with gunpowder and the mariner’s ccmpass—and did not begin to be a really powerful cause ,of social change until the industrial revolution 150 years ago. To predict on the bafcis of such a brief experience was hazardous, and all that could be done was to pick out certain aspects of the question with a view to causing awareness of dangers and possibilities.

Broadly speaking, we were in the middle of a race between human skill as to means and human folly as to ends. Given sufficient folly as to ends, every increase in the skill required to achieve them was to the bad. The human race had survived because of ignorance and incompetence; but, given knowledge and competence combined with folly, there could be no certainty of survival. Knowledge was a power for evil just as much as for good. It followed that unless men increased in wisdom as much as in knowledge, increase of knowledge would be increase of sorrow.

Earl Russell grouped possible causes of instability under three headings—physical, biological, and psychological. Discussing the first, he said that industry and agriculture, to a continually increasing degree, were carried on in ways that wasted the world’s capital of natural resources. This had always been the in agriculture since man first rilled the soil, except in places like the Nile valley, where there were exceptional circumstances. While population was sparse, people merely moved on when their fields became .unsatisfactory. Then it was found that corpses could be used as fertilisers and human sacrifices became common, with the double advantage of increasing the yield and diminishing the number of mouths to be fed. Nevertheless, the method came to be frowned upon, and its place was taken by war. Wars, however, were not sufficiently destructive of human life to prevent the survivors from suffering, and the exhaustion of the soil had continued at a constantly increasing rate.

It was now . known what must be done if the world’s supply of food was not to diminish catastrophically, but whether what was necessary would be done was very doubtfuL Depletion of Materials

Raw materials presented as grave a problem as agriculture. The oil and tin supplies were being rapidly depleted. “Of course I shall be told that atomic energy will replace oil as a source of power,” he continued. “But what will happen when all the available uranium and thorium have done their work of killing men and fishes?” No doubr science would discover new sources of energy as the need arose, but that involved a gradual decrease in the yield of a given amount of land and labour, and in any case was an essentially temporary expedient. The world had been living on capital, and so long as it remainea industrial must continue to do so.

Under the heading “biological,” Earl Russell said that medicine could not, except over a short period, increase the population of the world. In China, European and American medical missions did much to diminish the infant death-rate. The consequence was that more children died painfully of famine at the age of five or six. Except where the birth-rate was low the population in the long run depended on the food supply and nothing else. - The population of the world at present was increasing by about 58,000 a day or about 20,000,000 a year, and unless the increase was checked there must be a general lowering of the standard of life in what were now prosperous countries, and with it a great diminution in the demand for industrial materials. Birth Control

“What then can we do?” he continued. “Apart from certain deep-seat-ed prejudices the answer would be obvious. The nations which at present increase rapidly should be encouraged to adopt the methods by which, in the west, the increase has been checked. Educational propaganda with government help could achieve this result in a generation.”

Two powerful forces—religion and nationalism—were opposed to such a policy, but Earl' Russell considered it the duty of all capable of facing facts to realise, and to proclaim, that opposition to the spread of birth control, if successful, must inflict upon mankind the most appalling depth of misery and degradation, and that within another 59 years or so.

War had been disappointing in restricting the population, but bacteriological war might prove more effective. If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. There would be nothing in that to offend Ihe consciences of the devout or to restrain the ambitions of nationalists.

There were three ways of securing a society stable as regards population —birth control, infanticide or really destructive wars, and general misery

except for a powerful minority. Of the three only birth control avoided extreme cruelty and unhappiness for the majority of human beings. So long .as there was not a single world government there would be competition for power, and as increased population brought the threat of famine national power would become more and more obviously the only way of avoiding starvation. There wduld, therefore, be blocs in which the hungry nations banded together against those that were well fed. World Government Needed The need for a world government if the population problem was to be solved in any humane manner was completely evident on Darwinian principles, he added. “Psychologically, there are two opposite maladies which have become so common as to be dominant factors m politics,” Earl Russell said, discussing the psychological aspect. “One rage, the other listlessness. Rage causes nations to embark on enterprises that are practically certain to be injurious to themselves; listlessness, causes othei nations to be careless in warding off evils and generally disinclined to undertake anything arduous. Both are the outcome of a deep malaise resulting from lack of harmony between disposition and mode oi hf One of the causes of psychological discontent was the rapidity of change in material conditions, and another, more potent perhaps, was the increasing subordination of individuals to organisations. ft was hopeless to construct schemes for preserving peace if most people would rather not preserve it, said Earl Russell after discussing the attitude of men and women to war. He thougnt that if the question “Are you more or less happy now than during the war. was addressed to men and women u would be found that a considerable percentage were less happy. “Soil and raw materials must not be used up so far that scientific progress cannot continually make good the loss by means of new inventions and discoveries,” said Earl Russell, givmg his conclusions. “Scientific progress is therefore a condition, not merely .0’ social progress, but even of maintaining the degree of prosperity already achieved. Given a stationary technique, the raw materials that it requires will be used up in no very long time. If raw materials are not to pe used up too fast, there must not be free competition for their acquisition and use, but an international authority to ration them in such quantities as may from time to time seem compatible with continued industrial prosperity. Similar considerations apply to soil conservation. “If there is not to be a permanent and increasing ’shortage of food, agri" culture must be conducted by methods which are not wasteful of soil, ana increase of population must not outrun the increase in food production rendered possible by technical improvements. At present neither condition is fulfilled. The population of the world is increasing, and its capacity for food production is diminishing.” To deal with the problem ways be found to prevent an increase mi the population, and to do this without wars, pestilences and famines demanded a powerful international authority to deal out the world’s food to the various nations in proportion to their population at the time of the establishment of the authority.

Logical but Impracticable Such a solution, although logical, was at present totally impracticable. Taking a long view, however, it was by no means impossible that the population problem would in time solve itself. Prosperous industrial countries had low birth rates; Western nations barely maintained their numbers. If the East became as prosperous and industrial as the West the increase of population might become sufficiently slow to present no insoluble problem. “In general terms, we may say that so far as the population problem is concerned, a scientific society could be stable if all the world were as prosperous as America is now. The difficulty, however, is to reach this economic paradise without a previous success in limiting population. Only Government propaganda on a large scale could quickly change the biological habits of Asia, but Eastern governments would never consent to this except after defeat in war. Without such a change of biological habits Asia cannot become prosperous except by defeating the Western nations, exterminating a large part of their population, and opening the territories now occu-. pied by them to Asiatic immigrationFor the Western nations this is not an attractive prospect, but it is not impossible that it may happen.’’ Earl Russell’s conclusion was that a scientific society could be stable, given certain conditions. The first was a single government of the whole world possessing a monopoly of armed force and therefore able to enforce peace. The second was a general diffusion of prosperity, so that there was no occasion for envy of one part of the world by another. The third condition (which supposed the second fulfilled) was a low birthrate everywhere so that the population of the world could become • stationary or nearly so. The fourth condition was the provision for individual initiative both in work and play, and the greatest diffusion of power compatible with maintaining the necessary political and economic framework.