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198  From Prometheus to Frankenstein
     March 3, 1970

     Some of our most pervasive myths concern the ambivalence of human
knowledge (The Fall of Man; the Punishment of Prometheus; the Faustus
legend; Frankenstein ("the new Prometheus") and his monster.)

     At the present time, many voices demand some kind of social 
control over the potential abuses of new knowledge.  These concerns have
many sources; many of them are confused and mutually inconsistent --
for example, we may hear demands for the containment of knowledge that
are tantamount to the thought control which is the preeminent fear.  
The most strident abuses are those which, for example in military
technology, enhance the actual or self-perceived power of the community
itself.  The development of nuclear energy and weaponry might appear
to the ultimate unthinkable for the possible abuse of physical
science.  Nevertheless, the power of nuclear energy is still contingent
on a large scale industrial plant, and its control remains within the
sphere of geopolitics and international relations.

     One can, however, fabricate a compelling example of the necessity
of stringent social control of certain kinds of knowledge, for example
when we anticipate the possibility of a BBHB (bargain basement
hydrogen-bomb), a nuclear weapon for personal use.  It staggers the
liberal imagination to speculate on the political and interpersonal
framework of a world where such a diffusion of destructive power could
be contemplated.  We may also tax ourselves to begin a critical
analysis of the stages of such developments.  We would then have to
weigh the realistic costs and side-effects of attempts to forestall
them, or to establish technical or institutional antidotes.

     More recently, the burden of such concerns has shifted to biology
and psychology.  Some of these concerns have a realistic basis -- for
example, the germ weapon might still be the political equivalent of
the BBHB.  (President Nixon's policy statements in recent months about
U.S. investment in BW research are the first encouragement that we are
not actively dissipating the main barriers to a biological BBHB).  The
analogous challenges from the behavioral sciences are tempered more by
their complexity than their potential gravity.  One hears of "control
of mind"; but it is hard to draw a sharp line to distinguish this from
logically inevitable socialization, education and acculturation of the
young ideological recruitment and indoctrination, and the manipulation
of information, opinion and belief through the mass media.  The survival
of personal freedom is here closely bound up with the structure of
systems of communication.

     Public thinking tends to confuse these mass influences with 
isolated interventions that follow from experiments in biology, and
almost inordinate attention has been given to issues like genetic
engineering.  This has much the same relationship to the manipulation
of the human being as does surgery or pedagogy.  There is no doubt
that great mischief can ensue if you put your child in the hands of an
incompetent or malevolent doctor (= "teacher").  A dictator could also
doubtless enforce a program of mass lobotomy to tranquilize his 
subjects.  (He has, of course, circuses and drugs as easier ways).  We
must look again to the protection of individual freedom in the face of
potential manipulation of any kind -- informed consent is the key,
which invokes responsibilities far beyond the legal forms of due pro-
process.  We must also inform, and we can hardly do this until we have
educated ourselves.

     Among the indictments of scientific progress, many are spurious;
some are paradoxical, and some are real.  Of the latter, anomalies of
power, and deceptions about true costs are the main categories that
first come to mind.

     We have still to build a science for the orderly classification of
the abuses of power and knowledge.
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