would suggest. For example, many artists and writers are now beginning to
express concern over the limited creative options they envisage in the warless
world they think, or hope, may be soon upon us. They are currently preparing
for this possibility by unprecedented experimentation with meaningless forms;
their interest in recent years has been increasingly engaged by the abstract
pattern, the gratuitous emotion, the random happening, and the unrelated
sequence.
The relationship of war to scientific research and discovery is more explicit.
War is the principal motivational force for the development of science at every
level, from the abstractly conceptual to the narrowly technological. Modern
society places a high value on "pure" science, but it is historically inescapable
that all the significant discoveries that have been made about the natural world
have been inspired by the real or imaginary military necessities of their epochs.
The consequences of the discoveries have indeed gone far afield, but war has
always provided the basic incentive.
Beginning with the development of iron and steel, and proceeding through the
discoveries of the laws of motion and thermodynamics to the age of the atomic
particle, the synthetic polymer, and the space capsule, no important scientific
advance has not been at least indirectly initiated by an implicit requirement of
weaponry. More prosaic examples include the transistor radio (an outgrowth of
military communications requirements), the assembly line (from Civil War
firearms needs), the steel-frame building (from the steel battleship), the canal
lock, and so on. A typical adaptation can be seen in a device as modest as the
common lawnmower; it developed from the revolving scythe devised by
Leonardo da Vinci to precede a horse-powered vehicle into enemy ranks.
The most direct relationship can be found in medical technology. For example,
a giant "walking machine," and amplifier of body motions invented for military
use in difficult terrain, is now making it possible for many previously con- fined
to wheelchairs to walk. The Vietnam war alone has led to spectacular
improvements in amputation procedures, blood-handling techniques, and
surgical logistics. It has stimulated new large-scale research on malaria and
other typical parasite diseases; it is hard to estimate how long this t? Amoould
otherwise have been delayed, despite its enormous nonmilitary importance to
nearly half the world's population.
OTHER
We have elected to omit from our discussion of the nonmilitary functions of war
those we do not consider critical to a transition program. This is not to say they
express concern over the limited creative options they envisage in the warless
world they think, or hope, may be soon upon us. They are currently preparing
for this possibility by unprecedented experimentation with meaningless forms;
their interest in recent years has been increasingly engaged by the abstract
pattern, the gratuitous emotion, the random happening, and the unrelated
sequence.
The relationship of war to scientific research and discovery is more explicit.
War is the principal motivational force for the development of science at every
level, from the abstractly conceptual to the narrowly technological. Modern
society places a high value on "pure" science, but it is historically inescapable
that all the significant discoveries that have been made about the natural world
have been inspired by the real or imaginary military necessities of their epochs.
The consequences of the discoveries have indeed gone far afield, but war has
always provided the basic incentive.
Beginning with the development of iron and steel, and proceeding through the
discoveries of the laws of motion and thermodynamics to the age of the atomic
particle, the synthetic polymer, and the space capsule, no important scientific
advance has not been at least indirectly initiated by an implicit requirement of
weaponry. More prosaic examples include the transistor radio (an outgrowth of
military communications requirements), the assembly line (from Civil War
firearms needs), the steel-frame building (from the steel battleship), the canal
lock, and so on. A typical adaptation can be seen in a device as modest as the
common lawnmower; it developed from the revolving scythe devised by
Leonardo da Vinci to precede a horse-powered vehicle into enemy ranks.
The most direct relationship can be found in medical technology. For example,
a giant "walking machine," and amplifier of body motions invented for military
use in difficult terrain, is now making it possible for many previously con- fined
to wheelchairs to walk. The Vietnam war alone has led to spectacular
improvements in amputation procedures, blood-handling techniques, and
surgical logistics. It has stimulated new large-scale research on malaria and
other typical parasite diseases; it is hard to estimate how long this t? Amoould
otherwise have been delayed, despite its enormous nonmilitary importance to
nearly half the world's population.
OTHER
We have elected to omit from our discussion of the nonmilitary functions of war
those we do not consider critical to a transition program. This is not to say they
