Science for a Developing World [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONJLhe decision to call a Symposium on "Science in the Deve-lopment of the Economy and Welfare of Mankind" was made bythe World Federation of Scientific Workers at the beginning of 1959.It had seemed then that there was at last a real possibility ofturning science away from the uses in preparing war in which ithad been employed so much in the last few years.It was in this hope that our Federation thought it would be timelyand practical to examine the alternative of using science on aninternational scale for human betterment.The part that science, both in its more fundamental and in itsapplied aspects, is playing in all sectors of world economy today,is clearly increasing. What is not increasing at the same rate, is theunderstanding of precisely how it is used. More particularly do weneed to understand how it does happen and how it could be madeto happen in a world so divided as the world is today, into regionsof advanced and of retarded economy.How can science in the industrialized countries, which are under-going what is virtually a second industrial revolution a scientific-industrial revolution and science in the great areas of Asia, Africaand Latin America, be linked for the greatest mutual benefit?For these areas are at last coming into the field of industrial andagricultural development, and at a rate which indicates that a newtempo has arrived in human, social and economic evolution, onein which science is involved from the very outset.By bringing together, even for such a short period as three days,scientific experts in different fields of science, both natural andsocial, we hoped to be able to explore, if only in a premilinary way,various aspects of this transformation.