WORLD’S PROBLEMS EAST AND WEST SCIENTISTS SEEK RATIONAL SOLUTIONS

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33655, 3 October 1974, Page 12

WORLD’S PROBLEMS EAST AND WEST SCIENTISTS SEEK RATIONAL SOLUTIONS

(By

VICTOR ZORZA

in Vienna)

A unique international experiment, housed in what was once an Austrian emperor’s castle outside Vienna, has brought together the scientists of East and West in an attempt to work out rational solutions for the world’s problems. The 70 scientists in residence at Schloss Laxenburg come from 14 countries, but the biggest contingents are from the United States (17) and the Soviet Union (13).

The energy crisis in the West is considered by some Soviet politicians a boon for the East, but here the scientists’ only concern is how to deal with the energy problem in a worldwide setting, in the future rather than in the present. The comparatively backward state of the Soviet Union’s computer industry is seen by same in the West as the means of extracting political advantage in exchange for advanced technology. But here the head of the computer project is a Russian, planning an international computer • network which could make it possible for groups of scientists in different countries to work together on the same problems. The urban project, under a Canadian seeks the best way to manage the growth of cities, now a problem in both East and West. It tries to relate the tasks to commonly accepted goals, the mere listing of which presents a catalogue of the world’s major problems: “Economic growth and development, social mobility and opportunity, equity and justice, environmental quality.” There is the industrial project, the ecology and environment project, the biology and medical project —nine projects in all, seemingly separate but closely interrelated, dependent on each other for information, for stimulation, for questions as well as for ansivers. All these problems are certainly studied elsewhere, but here at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (1.1.A.5.A.) they have been brought together under one roof to be viewed as one, regardless of national frontiers. After five years of delicate negotiation between Washington and Moscow, with the participation of other countries, the; institute’s charter was signed two years ago.

The charter acknowledged that the development of industry, science and technology now posed increasingly complex problems for modern societies. It was therefore necessary to im-

prove the methods of analysis in order to predict and to manage the social and other repercussions of such development, which “if wisely directed, can benefit all mankind.”

Systems analysis The chairman of the 1.1.A.5.A. council, Mr Jermen Gvishiani, a son-in-law of Premier Kosygin, and the leading Soviet “science politician” in his own right, has repeatedly urged the use of systems analysis to solve some of the problems faced by the Soviet Union. More orthodox Marxists have been deeply suspicious of this “Western” science, but it is gradually being accepted in the Soviet Union as a useful, “neutral,” tool of organisational management. Mr Gvishiani argues that the resources now needed to use system analysis for the solution of many problems exceed the means of any single country. The director of 1.1.A.5.A., Dr Howard Raiffa, of Harvard, sees systems analysis not as a technique, but as a rational approach to the resolution of complex problems. As practised at 1.1.A.5.A., it is a framework of thought designed to help decisionmakers of all countries to choose the desirable or the best course of action. It combines all the new tools, from management science to information theory, from cost benefit analysis to behavioural decision theory, from operation research to organisational theory. Tools for problems The long words and impersonal concepts which have to be used to describe what 1.1.A.5.A. does not to be allowed to obscure the utterly simple and deeply

personal commitment of its staff to a better world, to what might yet become one world. They do not discuss it in these terms, because this would immediately bring it into the realm of politics, of argument, of divisive ideology. They are content to leave this to the politicians, while they themselves fashion the tools for the politicians to use when the problems of the world become unmanageable. But for 1.1.A.5.A. to confine itself to this would be a counsel of despair, while in fact Schloss Laxenburg is a radiantly optimistic place. 1.1.A.5.A. studies will identify for the politicians the problems which the world is going to face long before these become visible to the naked eye. The studies will indicate possible solutions, not one solution, but. all the options, and the trade-offs between them, so that the politicians could see the benefits as well as the costs of the choice they make, and the penalties for inaction.

1.1.A.5.A. is an optimistic place, because, even after three days spent there looking into the various projects, it is clear that sooner or later the politicians will have to accept its view that the world is one, and will have to act on it.

Three days is barely enough to capture the spirit of the place, certainly not enough to comprehend the whole complexity of the problems it is dealing with. But it is becoming a place of which much more will be heard, for no itinerant journalist visiting the capitals of Europe can now afford to miss it. There is more to be learned at 1.1.A.5.A. than from a chat with many a Prime Minister. (Copyright Victor Zorza 1974)