The Need for Counter-Controls

by George Eastman - 1970

Our technological society demands new legislation to restrain people and groups from causing injury to others. (Source: ERIC)

George Eastman is associate professor of social foundations at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Man cannot escape controls in some form. "Control" implies three entailed concepts: defining, standard-setting, and boundary-setting. The very process of thinking constitutes one of the three fundamental controls on man. To "think" means to define, and this always means to categorize, to perform a process of selection and rejection. Thinking is, in fact, a continuous process of accepting some things into consciousness and excluding other things. It is the process by which standards of reality arc formulated and maintained. The other two fundamental controls on man are his physiology and his ecology. As a neuro-bio-chemical entity there arc built-in limits on man's physical and psychological capabilities. For example, in the case of a human nerve impulse, a neuron must "rest" for 1.5 X 10^-2 seconds before a standard response can be followed by another stimulation. However, the brain's memory capacity is estimated to be 280 billion bits, of which we consistently use but a small fraction. There are ecological controls that set limits to man. As presently constituted man requires so much oxygen and nourishment. There is a basic ecological balance between energy sources and waste elimination which, if seriously upset and uncompensated, leads to specie extinction.

Consider an imaginary scale of control ranging from these fundamental ones to those increasingly less fundamental or determined. Thus:

As one moves up the scale away from such determinate controls as the physiological and ecological, one moves progressively toward intellectual constructs which are less determinate and which vary with respect to culture, time, place, person. A particular myth may control the behavior and thought of one group, but have no controlling force at all on another. The "scientific community," a phenomenon of modern times, is controlled at one level by the demands of ''theory," and given that theory is grounded in a method of experimental validation mutually assented to by scientists in all countries, it can be seen that "scientific method" is more determinate than indeterminate. Although science is no longer significantly influenced by traditional religious constraints, it is influenced by politico-economic constraints, a factor of great importance in the counter-control problem and which is discussed later in this paper.

Modern science represents a systematic attempt to develop methods of control of those variables that determine the physiological, psychological, and ecological limits of man. Science, especially through its technological extension, has increasingly freed man from certain types of controls, while at the same time replacing these with others less obvious. Thus man has largely been freed from the necessity of exhausting himself physically in order to keep alive. Machines, such as cranes, conveyer belts, hydraulic lifts, trucks, tractors, engines of all kinds, free him from gross physical drudgery. Man is freed to travel quicklyby jet, and even by rocket. Man has freed himself of earth's gravitational pull and is placing himself in a position to land on other planets. Man has freed himself of reliance on such natural resources as wool, cotton, and wood. The individual has freed himself from having to produce his own food, shelter, or body covering with his own hands. Finally, man has freed himself from the need to think about certain things. Computers perform almost instantly those basic mathematical and statistical processes which formerly man labored over.ⁱ

But for each release from any one boundary, a different boundary or control is created or evolves to take its place. Thus man may not exhaust himself physically, but what about psychologically? The continued increase in mental illness, in heart disorders, in nervous breakdowns, in general angst, alienation, and depression, as well as an increase in obesity and other accompaniments of body disuse, suggest that man may be freed from one burden only to have it replaced by another. In being freed to travel quickly over long distances, man has opened himself to new types of stressesto the need for making rapid emotional transitions, to developing fleeting but hopefully satisfying relationships, to developing stability under conditions of extreme and sudden change. Man learns to rely on synthetic fibers and on plastics, but the processing of these raw materials and their production into goods creates waste matter resistant to decomposition. So a problem develops concerning pollution of natural resources. In freeing himself from having to produce his own food, shelter, and clothing, man has made himself increasingly dependent upon other persons, organizations, bureaucracies, and impersonal processes for his very existence. Increased interdependency, then, imposes controls upon the interdependent persons. In a system of interlocking dependencies, a breakdown in any one part of the system affects, at some point and to some degree, other parts of the system. Man may be freed from certain computational processes, but he has been forced to think about new, perplexing, and highly complex things such as: Are traditional ethical systems and social structures suitable for a modern society? Is man basically plastic, capable of being molded into whatever form evolving circumstances dictate, or is there a basic "human nature" that provides criteria for determining what is "natural" and "good" for man? Is there a purpose, some justifying reason for human existence that itself needs no justification?

Substitute Controls

Thus for each release from any one control a different control or constraint emerges to take its place. These emerging constraints, called here "substitute controls," have evolved in response to displacement of traditional controls, and fall into three categories: physical, sociological, and psychological. A substitute control -generally differs from the control it has displaced in one of two ways: the effect of the control remains basically the same, but its form is different (e.g., the need for conforming behavior in United States society, formerly achieved by settling in one place, is now achieved by being willing to move from city to city), or both the effect and the form are different, although still sufficiently related to the displaced control, so as to be seen as a "substitute" (e.g., acculturation into a value system through Sunday school and other church contacts is replaced by acculturation through TV exposure). Controls in society are constantly shifting in form and effect, so that any given substitute control will itself be displaced by still another substitute control. This analysis involves artificially suspending a slice of a culture-life in time in order to expose the structure of the phenomenon (like a microscope slide-specimen), so as to increase the possibility of more rationally introducing counter-controls into the system.

United States culture may be described as currently experiencing an extreme lag in formulating and counter-controlling these substitute controls. The current situation is one of noncontrol, in which most substitute controls develop in an unchecked manner, very often not recognized by those controlled, or if recognized, seen as "natural" and "inevitable" expressions of reality.

One example of a physical substitute control is mobility. This is a substitute control for immobility. Where once respectability was equated with sinking ''deep roots" in a community, today the respected, enterprising, resourceful young executive is mobile. To say "X is on the move" is to confer an accolade. Entire families dislocate themselves more frequently than ever before in modern society. Up to 22 percent of the American population moves each year.

Pollution and depletion of natural resources constitute another physical substitute control.ⁱⁱ Swimming is not permitted nor is it feasible; fishing declines; noxious odors are created; and the water surface becomes foamy with algae and phosphates. Pesticides and other chemicals increasingly used in farming are absorbed by and accumulated in living organisms.

Interdependency

A pervasive physical substitute control, one with profound sociological and psychological ramifications, is the extreme physical dependency and interdependency of persons in United States society. A striking example of this is found in the massive power failure that struck New York City in 1965. Some newer apartment buildings were completely "climate controlled"; that is, because they relied completely on air-conditioning for both the supply of oxygen and the exhaust of gases, their windows were sealed. Persons occupying such buildings during the power failure were forced to break windows in order to have adequate air to breathe. The service industries become increasingly complex, with the average person becoming progressively more dependent upon the decisions of large numbers of persons in a long chain of mutual dependencies for even such amenities as oxygen. The current preoccupation with "systems analysis" is an acknowledgment of the pervasive effects of interdependency in our society. The paradigm of the kind of physical-psycho-social interdependency that is emerging in United States culture is found in the concept of system, described as follows in one source: "Technology has been characterized since the end of World War II by the development of complex systems containing large numbers of subsystems, components, and parts. This trend to even larger and more complex systems is accelerating with the development of space vehicles, electronic computers, and communication and weapons systems. Many of these systems may fail or may operate inefficiently if a single part or component fails."ⁱⁱⁱ This type of breakdown applies to organic systems as well as mechanical, social, and organizational systems. Organic systems are generally capable of regeneration. The substitute control phenomenon in United States culture is an instance of this, such controls often being older controls that have regenerated into new forms more organically related to the present.

There are sociological substitute controls. Social status in our culture tends to be measured in terms of possessionshouse, cars, electronic gadgetry, land, stock. More and more, it appears, a person must acquire more, bigger, and better things in order to establish his worth in his own and in others' eyes. Thus acquisitiveness becomes a dominant control that replaces older controls such as pressure to develop conforming behaviors in order to be accepted into a community in which one spends his life.

Change and Fluidity

A second sociological substitute control assumes the form of the displacement of the older norm of stability and permanence by a norm of change and fluidity. This is especially true for the oncoming generations, who often seem driven by a need to experience new sensations, ideas, and discoveries in rapid succession. Lifton^iv argues that a new type of person is emerging in advanced technological societies. This new man he calls "protean," whose life-style "is characterized by an interminable series of experiments and explorationssome shallow, some profoundeach of which may be readily abandoned in favor of still new psychological quests." But, Lifton is quick to stress "the protean style is by no means pathological as such, and in fact may well be one of the central adaptive patterns of our day. It extends to all areas of human experienceto sexual as well as political behavior, to the holding and promulgating of ideas, and to the general organization of lives." Where formerly social control meant largely restraining and delimiting, a substitute control is emerging that demands expanding, experimenting, avoiding the settled and fixed.

Bureaucratization

A third sociological substitute control takes the form of the increasing bureaucratization of relationships that is occurring in United States culture. Mannheim argues that as a society increasingly organizes its members in terms of efficient realization of ends (i.e., in terms of what he calls ''functional rationality"), there is a corresponding decline in the individual's capacity to follow his own insights, preferences, and judgments (i.e., "substantial rationality").^v Bureaucratization, C. Wright Mills argues, leads to the creation of men and women who "are estranged from one another as each secretly tries to make an instrument of the other, and in time a full circle is made: one makes an instrument of himself and is estranged from it also."^vi The substitute control in this instance can be described as pressure to be other-directed rather than to be inner-directed and to avoid and escape from the self rather than to engage it and get "inside" oneself and other selves.^vii Most persons in our society continue to think in terms of "God's in his Heaven and all's right with the world." They are not really convinced that it is man who is altering his own environment. But as one scientist observes:

Underlying our apparently passive acceptance of an increasingly engineered world and the unbelievable rate of change in our lives and our values is a gnawing fear.... All of us are growing accustomed to reading casually of high-speed computers, rockets to the moon, mysterious life-controlling abbreviations like DNA or ACTH, of new and continuously more potent forces. These are all used by experts in a way that leaves the rest of us farther behind, increasingly dependent on things we can no longer touch or understand. What is really left behind is a sense of personal control over ourselves.^viii

There are many psychological substitute controls in United States culture that have emerged to replace traditional controls which themselves arose out of the Greco-Judeo-Christian tradition. Three have been mentioned: embracing change rather than permanence as a norm; preferring other- to inner-directed-ness;^ix and measuring worth in terms of material acquisitions. Two related and pervasive psychological substitute controls are reduced gratification and a sense of uncertainty and anxiety. As one is able to acquire ever more goods and services in ever more rapid succession, the amount of satisfaction available for any one acquisition is lessened. Pleasure, satisfaction, energy, time, etc., can be seen in zero sum terms, such that there is a limited source which if used one way is not available to be used in some other way. The impulsive buying which large stores induce through conspicuous and convenient display, facilitated by ease of credit buying, leads to a reduction of pleasure attached to any one act of acquisition, and thus the proliferation of the acquiring act so as to restore a desired sense of satisfaction.

Where, in the past, believers in Judaism and Christianity could feel secure that there was a purposefulness and ultimate plan which man and the universe were working out, most of the oncoming generation find appeals to this way of thinking unconvincing and annoying. Their thinking generally tends to be more consistent with a notion of indeterminacy than with a belief in predeterminacy. Thus the norm is a freeing of conceptual boundaries to the point where boundaries are blurred or nonexistent. The indeterminate conceptual situation thus created tends to produce, at least for the transitional generations with one foot still in determinacy, a pervasive anxiety, which, when sustained over long periods, produces fear, intolerance, and overt violence.

Providing Counter-Controls

Some persons have systematically sought to describe the substitute controls that emerge largely unchecked and unsought in technological societies. Ellul,^x Marcuse,^xi Allen,^xii Churchman,^xiii Boguslaw,^xiv and Mumford^xv have undertaken this task, acting out of a variety of presuppositions. But the two sectors of United States society possessing greatest power to articulate and formulate counter-controls the political and industrialare the most resistant to taking incisive action.

Wheeler^xvi argues that traditional Western notions of legislation and constitutionalization are inadequate to provide the counter-controls (i.e., new substitute controls that reflect a planned effort to realize certain chosen values and goals) now needed for what he calls "developmental science." This is because, he points out, these traditional notions are based on two now invalid assumptions: that all men are capable of understanding the basic problems of society, and that such men are capable of making laws to rectify these problems. These are invalid because "The scientific revolution is undermining the first... by posing problems too technical for laymen to fathom [and] . . . undermining the second by making it impossible for legislatures to lay the foundation for the future." The thrust of Wheeler's argument is that science needs planning at every stage, and especially at the stage of policy formulation. For example, Collins writes in connection with pollution of natural resources: "If biological science, however politically impotent it has been, is not soon heard at the policy planning tables as an equal, it will have to remain content to be a docile, uncomplaining, and silent servant for the government, military, industrial, and agricultural establishments."^xvii In addition to the argument that science, particularly developmental science, leads to basic changes in the values and lifestyle of a culture, Wheeler also argues that "science is not the private property of scientists... corruption occurs when scientists forget this... we need a new Henry George to point out that if anybody 'owns' science, it is the people themselves." Thus Wheeler's proposed solution to the problem of counter-controlling the substitute controls of modern science is "to provide for the constitutionalization of science in a special polity combining principles of both democracy and the rule of law."

Industry's Position

Industry has shown little willingness and less initiative to decrease pollution or to regulate its advertising, marketing, and producing patterns in the interest of defining and counter-controlling the substitute controls that it creates. In all cases legislation has been needed, and what legislation there has been has represented concessions to the powerful lobbies maintained by all industries. Thus it is said oil refinery X must build a high-rate filtration plant by 1969, but when 1969 comes an extension is granted to 1975, and the pollution continues. Many studies issue forth yearly concerning water and air pollution. Many of these are reports of conferences that bring together representatives of Federal, state, and local governments, universities, and industry. There is a recurring pattern to these conferences. Scientists state the facts, which indisputably indicate advanced pollution and which indisputably implicate both industry and municipalities. Industry seldom explicitly acknowledges its contribution to pollution (40-60 percent of water pollution and up to 90 percent of air pollution), but refers to the "pollution problem" as though it has arisen like a bad genie. Industry is willing to do something if it can be helped through special tax incentives. The position of industry seems to be that even though it may be the majority supplier of pollutants, it is in some magical way not really responsible for the fact that water and air have become polluted. Politicians tend to buy industry's line and to favor tax incentives and "correction" of the problem through public taxes. The question must be raised: Ought not industry itself to carry the burden of restoring polluted resources when it is often the main polluter?^xviii

But there are other reasons for the inability or disinclination of men to devise counter-controls than the lure of profits. The problem is, in fact, considerably more complex. United States society appears to be locked into a causal spiral, such that the prevailing physical, sociological, and psychological substitute controls largely preclude either formulating or devising counter-controls. Thus, for example, if one is locked into a life-pattern based on compulsive acquisition combined with reduced gratification, and is also self-alienated and other-directed, and at the same time dominated by a feeling of uncertainty and ambiguity, it appears there is practically no direction one can take except to more frantically acquire and more compulsively become dependent on persons, events, and things outside oneself. But this very direction, as is clear, precisely perpetuates the very substitute controls that need to be counter-controlled. The question becomes; How does one break out of a causal spiral that perpetuates forms of substitute controls that appear even more ruthlessly en-tropic than those for which they are substitutes?

Education for Counter-Controls

Rejecting revolution as a self-defeating counter-control agent under the present circumstances, the only viable solution at this time appears to be educational.^xix There are three established educational outlets that could be utilized for the study and development of counter-controls for the substitute controls that have resulted from modern science and technology. One is precollegiate public education, the second is collegiate education, public and private, and the third consists of foundations, research and study centers, and professional societies and groups.

At the precollegiate public school level efforts can be made to have boards of education adopt curricula dealing with this problem. Teachers can be trained to deal with the counter-control issue in the classroom and to speak to citizens' groups inside and outside of school. Adult high school courses can be offered and special lectures presented to parents sponsored by PTA's and Mothers' Clubs. Journals and newsletters read by classroom teachers can deal with the counter-control problem. Assemblies and symposia can be devoted to this issue.^xx All of these activities would, of course, he in opposition to the historical and current role of public education, which is to acculturate the oncoming generations into those values, life-patterns, and conceptual structurings which favor and prolong the status quo.

At the collegiate level the whole arsenal of systematic study, discussion, and dissemination can be zeroed-in on the counter-control problem. But an irony arises. Although the university community might be expected to be highly supportive of rational, systematic planning, it is more often hostile or indifferent to carrying out in practice the operational implications and directives of the theories it advances. For example, B. F. Skinner, who is one of the few voices in the academic community who has outspokenly argued that man does possess highly developed techniques of behavioral control and that these ought to be intelligently and consciously employed for realizing chosen ends, rather than be permitted to operate so as to bring about unchosen and possibly fatal ends, tends to arouse most hostility among the very groups most sensitive to the oppressions of technologythe literati and humanistic or "soft data" psychologists and sociologists. This ironic state of affairs is unfortunate. What Skinner is doing is pointing out the actual ways in which a large share of our behavior is shaped, and to the extent that we make the shaping mechanism explicit, then to that extent we can control it and so determine our own character and ends. As he writes: "The question is this: Are we to be controlled by accident, by tyrants, or by ourselves in effective cultural design?"^xxi And, furthermore, "The first step in a defense against tyranny is the fullest possible exposure of controlling techniques."

Technological Fixes

Related to Skinner's conception of freedom through planning is Weinberg's^xxii conception of "technological fixes." By a "technological fix" is meant a technological process or product which is able to reduce an extremely complicated social question to a matter of engineering. The intrauterine device for birth control, or desalination plants on a worldwide scale, are examples of solving complex socio-politico-economic problems through technology. Weinberg approvingly cites Nader's observation that the development and sale of a safer car is a surer way of reducing traffic deaths than trying to teach or influence people to drive more safely. He states that if he were asked who has given the world a more effective means of achieving peace, "our great religious leaders who urge men to love their neighbors and thus avoid fights, or our weapons technologists who simply present men with no rational alternative to peaceI would vote for the weapons technologist," What Weinberg argues is that although all social problems cannot be reduced to quick technological solutions or "fixes," some of the most significant problems can-, and to facilitate this, he points out, there must be far closer cooperation between technologists and social theorists and social engineers. However, there are dangers in believing that significant socio-political problems can be resolved through application of technological-engineering expertise. The most blatant danger is that it encourages neglect, if not avoidance^ of the basic, underlying value questions, and serves to prevent the radical upheaval in institutional structures and social and personal values which is usually necessary for any fundamental change to occur.^xxiii

One of the central reasons for the absence of counter-controls, particularly in the industrial, financial, and political sectors of our society today, reduces to the question of priorities. Until recently, ever increasing amounts of both pure and applied research within the university have been funded by such government agencies as the Department of Defense.^xxiv A difference could be made, however, if but a small percentage of the resources expended by the Department of Defense and by the government generally in the interest of "defense," the waging of wars, and the maintenance of military and quasi-military aid programs, were to be devoted to such questions as pollution and depletion of natural resources, the basic changes in life patterns and values induced by technology, or articulating the types of social organization appropriate to an evolving post-modern civilization.^xxv The university could take the initiative by directing research into these areas and at the same time withdrawing commitments to defense and war efforts. When funds are so readily attainable through the Defense Department, academicians, who are not immune from the opportunism of our society, apply through that agency; and this has had the manifest effect of siphoning resources from those areas which we have labeled counter-control.

If the university community believed the problem of counter-control to be serious enough, all of its resources could be turned to informing itself and the public, and if enough universities did this, especially as a concerted, organized, national campaign, some inroads might be made into the public, industrial, political, and educational sectors of society.

The third educational outlet consists of foundations, special centers, and professional societies and groups. Centers, such as the Center for the Study of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Santa Barbara, some of which are independent research centers, but most of which are associated with universities, could turn systematically to the counter-control problem, perhaps pooling their resources in an effort to reach the public through a "digestible" TV series, pamphlets, press releases, and popular magazine articles. Such foundations as Ford and Carnegie might be persuaded to support systematic studies of the actual extent of pollution, of the effects of advertising on values, of the effects of compulsive acquisitiveness on interpersonal perception, etc. The situation here may be parallel to that of the public schools, in that there is evidence to suggest foundations are too committed to the existing socio-politico-economic establishment to sponsor studiesno less actionthat lead to fundamental correction or alteration of the status quo.^xxvi

A recently organized group of physicists, calling itself "Scientists Dedicated to Vigorous Social and Political Action," heretically disavows "the old credo that 'research means progress and progress is good/ Reliance on such simplistic ethical codes," the organization states, "has led to mistaken or even perverted uses of our scientific talents. (Consider the channeling of young scientists into weapons development work by the present complex of Federal policies on education, funding, and the draft.)" To counteract this kind of misuse of science, this organization has been created to explore such questions as: "Why are we scientists? For whose benefit do we work? What is the full measure of our moral and social responsibility?"^xxvii

Modern science involves both a set of attitudes and special methodologies. The attitude may be characterized as informed skepticism and experimentalism, and the method as one of controlled experimentation. The view of science held by the ordinary person in United States society is that of "scientism," which is a fusion of pre-and post-Newtonian science with Judeo-Christian assumptions of a determinant, teleological, eschatological reality.^xxviii The prevalence of "scientism" is one of the reasons why most Americans are unable to perceive clearly, or if perceive, to break out of the causal spiral of technologically induced substitute controls. As Berkner writes, "the completely rational aspects of human experience, represented by the ever growing body of agreed scientific thought, must be continually incorporated into a society's total philosophy, replacing the ad hoc assumptions previously made."^xxix But neither the attitude nor method of genuine science has been incorporated into the world view that dominates the mentality of the average American. For this reason the causal spiral will continue, for industrialists and teachers can easily argue that this is the way the world was predetermined to be and if it needs to be improved, Godor some white-coated laboratory substitutewill apply the right law at the right time. Counter-controls can emerge in our culture only in response to the very best effort of the best minds our society has produced. Without a systematic, planned, highly conscious effort to regulate the substitute controls that derive from technology and which shape human behavior, values, and destiny, we shall become ever more docile pawns in the hands of forces of our making but which we increasingly are unable to recognize as our own.

Endnotes

ⁱ Hannes Alfven. The Saga of the Super Computer. New York: Coward McCann, 1968. In this novel, the Swedish physicist traces the progressive displacement of human rationality by computer processes, culminating in the creation of an ultimate computer that has been programmed to answer the ultimate question: Ought the human race to continue?

ⁱⁱ A dramatic example of long-range effects of controlled, exploitative substitute controls on natural resources is found in Chile. There the Atacama Desert is progressively spreading, mainly because at the turn of the century nitrates were discovered in the desert, and the surrounding area and trees, shrubs and scrub growth, were burned and never replaced. The spread of the desert has produced climatic changes over a large area, with a progressive decrease in annual rainfall.

ⁱⁱⁱ David L. Sills, ed. The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan, 1968.

^iv Robert J. Lifton, "Protean Man," Yale Alumni Magazine, Jan. 1969.

^v K. Mannheim. Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction. New York: Harcourt, 1940.

^vi C. Wright Mills. White Collar. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.

^vii One current emerging counter-control to this tendency toward escape from engagement with the self and others is the sensitivity training or encounter group movement. See William Schute. Joy: Expanding Hitman Awareness. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1967; L. Bradford, J. Gibb, K. Benne. T-group Theory and Laboratory Method. New York: John Wiley, 1964; E. Schein, W, Bennis. Personal and Organizational Change Through Group Methods. New York: John Wiley, 1965.

^viii D. Heyneman, "Silent Spring'Action and Reaction," The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 28, September 1966, p. 517.

^ix Monasticism represents the psycho-logical extension of the Western (and still dominant Eastern) penchant for inner-directedness. Ostensibly the objective of monastic controls was to heighten one's awareness of, facilitate one's ability to communicate with, and prepare one's "soul" for Goda something both within and without man. Actually, it is argued, monasticism represents a stage of extreme, often pathological, self-preoccupation with all aspects of the self, from defecating, breathing, to thinking.

^x J. Ellul. The Technological Society. New York: Vintage, 1964.

^xi H. Marcuse. One-Dimensional Man, Boston: Beacon, 1966.

^xii F. R. Allen, et al Technology and Social Change. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, Inc. 1957.

^xiii C. W. Churchman. The Systems Approach. New York: Delacorte, 1968.

^xiv R. Boguslaw. The New Utopians: A Study of Systems Design and Social Change. New Jersey: Prentice-Hail, Inc., 1965.

^xv L. Mumford. Technics and Civilization, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, Inc., 1934, 1962.

^xvi Harvey Wheeler, "Bringing Science Under Law," The Center Magazine, Vol. 2, March 1969, pp. 59-67. By "developmental science" Wheeler means that blend of theoretical and applied science that lends itself to extremely rapid technological transformation. "Developmental science these days," he writes, "is almost immediately converted into technology." (This and following quotes on pp, 59, 60, 66-67.)

^xvii S. Collins, "Review of R. L. Rudd, Pesticides and the Living Landscape" BioScience, Nov. 1964, p. 38.

^xviii Typical of these conferences was that held under the auspices of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration on August 10-11, 1965, in Buffalo, New York. This was an "Enforcement Conference on the Interstate and Ohio Interstate Waters of Lake Erie and its Tributaries." The two volume Proceedings was not published until an entire year after the conference. Two years after this conference, a "Summary Report on Pollution of the Niagara River" of the International Joint Commission Advisory Board, indicates how much "enforcement" has been achieved: "The Buffalo River is always coated with oil. The principal known sources of these oils are the Pennsylvania Railroad shops, Mobil Oil Refinery, Donner-Hanna Coke Plant, and the Republic Steel Corporation. ... Approximately three square miles of Lake Erie in the vicinity of the mouth of Smoke Creek and South Ditch are usually covered with a visible film of oil, Bethlehem Steel wastes and Diesel refueling operations are the source of this oil." (12) See also: Frank E, Egler, "Pesticides in our Ecosystem: Communication II," BioScience, Nov. 1964, pp. 29-36; B. R. Wilson, ed. Environmental Problems; Pesticides, Thermal Pollution, and Environmental Synergisms, Philadelphia: J. B, Lippincott Co., 1968; Environmental Pollution Panel, President's Science Advisory Committee, Report, Restoring the Quality of Our Environment, Nov. 1965.

^xix EIlul, op. cit.

^xx As an example of an article intended to raise the fundamental issues behind counter-control, particularly the relationship of modern science to pre-modern, Newtonian science, see G. Eastman, "Scientism in Science Education," The Science Teacher, Vol. 36, April 1969, pp. 19-22.

^xxi This and following quotation from B. F. Skinner, "Freedom and the Control of Man," Cumulative Record. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1961. See also in Cumulative Record, "Some Issues Concerning the Control of Human Behavior," (a debate with Carl Rogers); and "The Design of Cultures."

^xxii A. M. Weinberg, "Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?" University of Chicago Magazine, October 1966, pp. 6-10.

^xxiii D. Horowitz and R. Erlich, "Big Brother as a Holding Company," Ramparts, Nov. 1968, pp. 45-52.

^xxiv For a systematic study of the type and extent of political, industrial, and financial influence upon higher education, see James Ridgeway. The Closed Corporation: American Universities in Crisis. New York; Random House, 1968.

^xxv Kenneth Boulding. The Meaning of the 20th Century. New York: Harper and Row, 1964. "Post-modern civilization" is intended to imply the meaning Boulding attaches to the term, "postcivilization." See also Lifton, op. cit.

^xxvi See D, Horowitz, "Billion Dollar Brains: How Wealth Puts Knowledge in its Pocket," Ramparts, May 1969, pp. 36-44; D. Horowitz, D. Kolodney, "The Foundations (Charity Begins at Home)," Ramparts, April 1969, pp. 39-48; and G. W. Domhoff. Who Rules America? New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1967.

^xxvii Reported in Nat Hentoff, "The Prison of Words; Language and the New Left," Evergreen Review, April 1969, p. 63. In 1960 a forward-looking group of scientists centered in the University of Rochester, New York, established the Rochester Committee for Scientific Information. This group's most successful project concerned abatement of water pollution in Monroe County, which resulted in local governments and industries committing over $180 million for abatement facilities, most of which are now under construction. Dr. David J. Wilson, professor of chemistry at the University of Rochester, and one of the chief organizers of the Committee, described this successful campaign against water pollution as "bloody," involving pressures to have him removed from his university position, and extending over five years. (Letter from D. J. Wilson to the author, June 5, 1969.)

^xxviii Eastman, op. cit.

^xxix L. V. Berkner. The Scientific Age: The Impact of Science on Society, New Haven; Yale University Press, 1964.

Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record Volume 72 Number 2, 1970, p. 275-288 https://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 1665, Date Accessed: 10/24/2021 11:32:38 PM Purchase Reprint Rights for this article or review