The Coming of Post-Industrial Society

by Daniel Bell

  But with the growth of Big Science, especially since World War II, the distinguishing feature of the “occupational society” is that few people “do” science, and many carry on research. Necessarily the “occupational society” creates its own structures of representation which function either politically, to mediate with government, or as lobbies (like trade associations), to guard the occupational interests of science. The major problem for science in the post-industrial society will be the relation between the “charismatic community” (the “invisible college”), which bestows recognition and status, and the bureaucratized institutions (scientific and technical societies, research institutions, engineering associations, and the like) of the occupational society, which wrestles not only with the more mundane facts of careers, promotions, and the availability of money, but with the inevitable process of the planning of science, which derives from the fact that the laissez-faire relation between science and government has vanished, and the question of what science should do (if it asks for public support and money) becomes a matter of negotiation.18

  Any social system is ultimately defined by an ethos—the values enshrined in creeds, the justifications established for rewards, and the norms of behavior embodied in character structure. The Protestant ethic was the ethos of capitalism and the idea of socialism the ethos of Soviet society. In the same way, the ethos of science is the emerging ethos of post-industrial society. Yet in the past instances the ethos diverged from reality. Bourgeois individuals became motivated by mundane acquisitive drives and hedonistic rewards rather than a sanctified calling of work; communist society today maintains large differentials of privilege which are now inherited despite the formal commitment to egalitarianism. In the end, both the Protestant ethic and the idea of socialism became ideologies, a set of formal justifications masking a reality, rather than imperatives for conduct. So, too, may the ethos of science. Formulated in an earlier age of innocence, it risks becoming the ideology of post-industrial society: a creed which establishes the norm of disinterested knowledge, but which is at variance with the reality of a new bureaucratic-technological order that is meshed with a centralized political system struggling to manage a complex and fractionated society. Whether this will happen—or under what conditions it might—is the subject of the next section.

  THE POLITICS OF SCIENCE

  In his novel The Shape of Things to Come, written forty years ago, H. G. Wells pictured a war-wasted world, where crudely clad Neanderthalers fight with club and spear among the mute ruins of a wrecked technological civilization. Finally this world is redeemed by a glitteringly dressed group of scientists who, having withdrawn a few decades before to some remote Eurasian wastes to build a rational civilization, now fly back and, with super-weapons of their own invention, impose universal peace on the bickering nations of the world.19

  Technocratic eudaemonism has always bred fantasies of science imposing its conceptions of order on the chaos of society. This messianism comes in part from the charismatic dimension of science and the original Weltanschauung which saw science as enlightenment, combatting both magic and religion. The theme first appears in Bacon’s New Atlantis, which created the image of the truths of science redressing the ignorance and superstitions of mankind. The head of Solomon’s House tells his visitors: “We have consultations which of the inventions and experiences we have discovered shall be published, and which not; and take all an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those we think fit to keep secret: though some of these we do reveal sometime to the State and some not.”20 It receives its most complete contemporary expression in the fantasy The Voice of the Dolphins, written in 1961 by that marvelous busybody-genius Leo Szilard, the man who initiated the chain of events that led to the atom-bomb project. Written from the vantage point of the year 2000, the book tells how world disarmament has been achieved through the intervention of the scientists ex machina. In this fantasy, a group of American and Russian scientists claims to have learned how to communicate with dolphins, whose larger brain capacity suggests a superior intelligence. They obtain from the dolphins solutions of various biological problems which result in the winning of multiple Nobel Prizes and the development of commercially profitable products. Of course, there is no such marine communication. The dolphin plan was necessary to mask the pooling of American and Russian scientific effort by men who, sacrificing personal fame, are able to accumulate large sums of money which are then used politically to buy out corrupt politicians. This political movement, centered in an institute named Amruss, finally succeeds in getting the world powers to disarm by 1988.

  The striking thing about Szilard’s fantasy was not any idea of technological gadgetry but two messianic images. One was the idea of the power of a few. It was derived from the thought that Werner Heisenberg expressed after the war: “In the summer of 1939 twelve people might still have been able, by coming to mutual agreement, to prevent the construction of atom-bombs.” Second was the contempt for politicians and the belief that only scientists, not politicians, could provide the rational solutions to the world’s problems. In Szilard’s fantasy, the narrator, looking back in time, remarks: “Political issues were often complex, but they were rarely as deep as the scientific problems which had been solved in the first half of the twentieth century. This was because a scientist discussed a question with another scientist on the issue only ‘whether it is true, whereas a politician suspiciously asks, ‘why did he say it?’”21

  The messianic role of science, however, though given powerful literary attention, rarely tempted many scientists. The majority of them, understandably, have preferred to “do” science and remain aloof from politics. Historically, in fact, the public liberties of the universities and the autonomy of science were guaranteed by the state in an implicit bargain, a viewpoint which was justified philosophically by Max Weber in his distinction of fact and values and his relegation of values (and politics) to the status of “ultimate” questions on which science could not pronounce. At the other end of the spectrum, there was also a small group of scientists who, out of a sense of public responsibility or patriotism (mixed inevitably with the personal lure of power), served their governments as advisors or as links with the scientific community.

  Before World War II, these were largely personal choices which did not affect the status of the enterprise of science itself. But in consequence of World War II, the situation has changed completely. Science has become an inextricable adjunct to power because of the nature of the new weaponry. Science has become integral to economic development. The rated power of a country no longer rests on its steel capacity but on the quality of its science and its application, through research and development, to new technology. For these obvious reasons the new relation of science to government (or, in the more fancy formulations, of truth to power) completely affects the structure of science both as “charismatic community” and as “occupational society.” What becomes central, therefore, is the question, Who speaks for science and for what ends?

  “The notion of an American science policy, a policy with which the scientists are to be influentially identified, requires the scientists to have leaders who can act as their representatives in that bargaining with public officials and other groups which accompanies the policy-making process,” Wallace Sayre has written. But Professor Sayre doubts that there are such accredited spokesmen, and he is skeptical even of the idea of a community of science as anything other than a rhetorical phrase.22

  Who are to be considered scientists? he asks. Are there “hard scientists” whose membership is taken for granted and “soft scientists” who are accepted on sufferance? Are physicists and chemists members by right while other natural scientists have to submit additional claims? Do all engineers qualify, or only certain types? Do doctors of medicine have entrée or only those engaged in medical research? In numbers, are they a small elite group—for example, the approximately 96,000 persons named in American Men of Science—or do they number several millio
n (if all engineers, doctors, and social scientists are admitted)?

  “The difficulties raised by these questions,” Sayre writes, “suggest that ‘the scientific community’ is most often used as a strategic phrase, intended by the user to imply a larger number of experts where only a few may in fact exist, or to imply unity of views where disagreement may in fact prevail. The phrase may thus belong in that class of innovations, so familiar to the political process, which summons up members and legitimacy for a point of view by asserting that ‘the American people’ or ‘the public’ or ‘all informed observers’ or ‘the experts’ demand this or reject that.”

  The difficulty with such nominalism is that its disingenuousness would debar almost all political analysis. By the same token, who speaks for “business” or “the blacks” or “the poor”? It is true that few constituencies in the American polity are “corporative” in that some single chosen spokesman acts for the interest of the whole—with the possible exception of labor, where a single body, the executive council of the AFL-CIO, formulates over-all policy, and George Meany expresses its opinion. But the heart of the political process is the recognition of roughly bounded constituencies and the existence of representative figures as influential. Do Richard C. Gerstenberg (General Motors) or Reginald Jones (General Electric) or Frank Cary (IBM) or John D. DeButts (AT&T) speak for business? Perhaps not; no one elected them. But when they speak as businessmen, their views carry weight in government because of their leading positions. Who speaks for the blacks? No single person or organization. But Martin Luther King and Whitney Young had weight, and Roy Wilkins and Jesse Jackson have influence, because of their positions or their ability to mobilize a following.

  In this sense, science has become a polity in that there are coherent bodies of opinion and representative figures. In order to identify a constituency and its leaders, we can admit as “members” those who have come into the arena publicly as scientists or who are represented by scientific bodies. These are of three kinds. There is, first, to use the current metaphor, a scientific establishment. It is composed, in overlapping layers, of the outstanding figures in the major universities, the heads and leading figures of the major government-sponsored laboratories (Brookhaven, Oak Ridge, Argonne, Livermore), the main science administrators from such industrial laboratories as Bell Telephone or IBM, the editors of the general science journals, and the leaders of such general associations as the National Academy of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is the political elite, which is not necessarily unified and which often plays the mediating role between government and science. There is, second, the “occupational society” which is made up of the more than 1,800 professional associations, such as the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Engineers Joint Council, the Institute of Radio Engineers, etc. While concerned with such intellectual problems as the publication and dissemination of research, and such educational issues as standards and training, they function more and more as “trade associations” for the professions, particularly in relation to government funds and policies for these fields.

  And finally there are a small number of individuals whose moral authority is drawn from their standing in the “charismatic community” and whose stature rests on their intellectual contributions—Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, von Neumann, and, in a wider penumbra, those who have received Nobel Prizes or other marks of intellectual distinction. When men from this body philosophize about science and society or speak out on moral and political issues, they are regarded, symbolically, as spokesmen for “science.”

  In this, however, are confused two very different kinds of sociological issues. The first is the role of science in speaking to the moral and political issues that confront society. Should it so speak in the name of science? Should it seek to remain outside government or within? If within, with what role and with what voice? As Szilard sardonically remarked, would scientists be on top or on tap? The second is the question of government policy for science: the degree of control or the direction of research, the level of spending and the allocation between fields, and the like. In the decade between 1945 and 1955, the first set of questions predominated; in the next decade it was the second.

  In the period immediately following World War II, a new scientific elite was intimately involved with questions of national power in a way unique to the history of science. There were those who believed that scientists would become a new priesthood of power, and those, of a more Utopian bent, who regarded scientists as prophets pointing the way to a new world society. In the end both visions faded, and the role of scientists as members of a power elite diminished. And yet it is that experience which has been crucial for the political fate of science and the question of what role science can play in a post-industrial society.

  In World War II, science was joined to power in a radically new way. In the United States (as in almost every country) every major scientist (principally physicists and chemists) was involved in the development of weapons of war.23 And this included, pre-eminently, the elders of the “community of science.” While scientists were involved in hundreds of research programs, the major effort, as fact and symbol, was the creation of the atomic bomb.

  The men who created these new weapons of war quickly stepped into positions of power not only as scientific advisors to government, but as shapers and makers of policy, particularly what to do with these weapons—and weapons were power. Rarely has a new power elite emerged so quickly. (Recall the marginal role of science in World War I.)

  Scientists came to the fore for two reasons. By cracking the powers of nature they had evoked deep mythological and atavistic fears—the apocalyptic destruction of the world—and were thus held in awe as the men who had unleashed these forces. On a more mundane level, these weapons involved a technical knowledge far beyond the competence of the military, and the military now seemed largely dependent on science. But the military, too, was a new elite. For the first time the United States had a large-scale military establishment which, it was clear, would be retained permanently. And the military did not like its dependence on science. From 1945 to 1955 a hidden war was waged between these two elites in the bureaucratic labyrinths of Washington, a struggle which ended in the political defeat of science.24

  For the nuclear physicists, a rupture of history occurred on that morning when the first atom bomb was exploded in the experimental area of the Alamogordo Air Base known as the Jornade del Muerto (The Death Tract). The news was officially reported in the incredibly pompous prose of a War Department handout: “Mankind’s successful transition to a new age, the Atomic Age, was ushered in July 16, 1945, before the eyes of a tense group of renowned scientists and military men gathered in the desert-lands of New Mexico to witness the first end results of their $2,000,000,000 effort. ...”25

  Paradoxically, some of the men who had initiated the steps leading to the “transition” were at that moment engaged in a desperate effort to prevent the final leap. “They believed,” as Eugene Rabinowitch wrote ten years later, “that mankind was entering, unawares, into a new age fraught with unprecedented dangers of destruction. In spring 1945 this conviction led some scientists to an attempt—perhaps the first one in history—to interfere as scientists with the political and military decisions of the nation.”26

  The group was headed by the Nobel laureate James Franck, one of the great figures at the University of Gottingen in the 1920s, and it included Szilard, Glenn Seaborg, Eugene Rabinowitch, and others. The Franck Committee presented a memorandum to the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, arguing that the chief reason for the bomb had been the fear that Germany would develop one, and would have no moral scruples about its use. With the war in Europe ended, any military advantages and American lives saved by using the bomb against Japan would be outweighed, they warned, by “the ensuing loss of confidence and by a wave of horror and revulsion” that would engulf the rest
of the world.27

  Stimson referred the report to the panel of scientific experts—Oppenheimer, Fermi, Lawrence, and Compton—and as Oppenheimer later wrote of their negative decision: “We said that we didn’t think that being scientists especially qualified us how to answer this question of how the bombs should be used or not; opinion was divided among us as it would be among other people if they knew about it.”

  But for the scientists who had worked on the bomb, the accounts of the explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki became an existentialist nightmare, forcing many of them to relive compulsively the forebodings which had haunted them throughout the years of their work. These feelings crystallized into a spontaneous movement to do things: to put atomic energy under the control of civilian authority28 and to seek for international agreements to abolish any further use of the bomb.

  The strategy adopted, however, was a cautious one. They realized that their proposal—the partial surrender of American sovereignty to an international body—would be difficult to “sell” to the Congress. And many were becoming aware of the hostility of the military leaders, who felt that their prerogatives in the formulation of strategic doctrine were being undermined by the newly emerging elite. The scientists, therefore, decided to tone down the moral basis of their argument, to deny they were the advocates of a decidedly political point of view, and to present their case on “technical” grounds.

  The American position on international control of atomic energy had been shaped by the scientists, particularly J. Robert Oppenheimer.29 It was prepared by a panel headed by Dean Acheson and David Lillienthal, and was presented to the United Nations in 1946 by Bernard Baruch. The Baruch Plan proposed an international Atomic Development Authority which would hold a monopoly on all the world’s “dangerous” fissionable materials and production plants. No nation could build its own atomic weapons, and sanctions would be applied against the offenders. The Atomic Development Authority would also seek to develop the peaceful uses of atomic energy for underdeveloped countries.30