Preface

Preface

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3The Franklin Lectures in the Sciences and Humanities, at Auburn University, are supported by the John and Mary Franklin Foundation of Atlanta, Georgia. They honor the memory of John Leonard Franklin, inventor and philanthropist, in whose life the qualities of humanity, imagination, and self-discipline were combined with a singular technical accomplishment.

4 To inaugurate the lecture series, the University invited three men whose achievements have long distinguished them as spokesmen for various dimensions of the scientific community---R. Buckminster Fuller, Eric Walker, and James R. Killian---and requested simply that they address themselves, in whatever way they wished, to the general problem of man’s retaining his humanity and ideals within a rapidly developing scientific and technological society. All three speakers, each in his own special way, expressed deep concern about the narrow outlook which contemporary education tends to foster in our engineers and scientists, who, paradoxically, are being called upon increasingly as advisors and decision makers to help society resolve many of the social and economic problems which the new technology has created. It is this shared concern, certainly, that underlies Fuller’s unique and remarkable historical analysis of the extinction implicit in overspecialization; Walker’s conviction that the engineering profession has not properly assumed its social responsibilities; and Killian’s advocacy of a new kind of systems approach, originating within universities and involving both scientists and humanists, to aid in the formation of public policy on matters relating to the national well-being.

5 In addition, however, to this somewhat common point of view, there is in these essays a larger coherent meaning that gives them a special significance. The three scientists are conscious of our failure to cope effectively with the staggering problems that blemish or obscure our national vitality, such as poverty and pollution, transportation, housing, and the tragic failure of the technological marvel of television to enrich and enlarge the mind and spirit of man. They also seem to recognize that our continued development of an alien environment, with all its attendant horror, urgently dictates the forms and directions that our individual and collective efforts must take if we are to define ourselves in the stream of time as a society willing to save itself from its own selfishness and apathy.

6 Each of these men has been personally involved over many decades in the scientific and technological accomplishments of this country. Each has a long memory and is deeply conscious of America’s past and of its connection with the present. Each seems confident of our inherent ability as a nation---with the university as a major center of creativity---to overcome squalor and despair, to halt what Walker describes as a ‘‘deterioration in the quality of our lives,’’ and to create, in Killian’s phase, a ‘‘benign environment.’’ It is indeed this very note of confidence that would seem to align their ideas with those of the students whom they addressed and, to be sure, with those of the great mass of young people today, who desperately wish to see that what each of these men says is eminently possible: a definite connection between education and conscience, between the university and the world.

7 The ultimate value of these essays, therefore, might well be to advance the hope that the generation currently occupying the seats of national power, with its capacity to mobilize the awesome energy of the country, might respond creatively to the warnings, designs, and the confidence of Americans like Fuller, Walker, and Killian. Indeed, such a national effort could be a genuine answer to concerns often expressed by the rising student generation---the fear that personality cannot triumph over technology, and the suspicion that the nation is unwilling to halt the gradual erosion of our common life. Doubtless, only through this kind of grand but attainable confluence of the power and hopes of the two generations can a benign environment emerge, an environment in which science can be directed toward moral and aesthetic objectives and these enterprises of great pitch and moment do not lose the name of action.

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10 Change: Break wip into a file per chapter

11 Contents

12 Preface by Taylor Littleton ix

13 APPROACHING THE BENIGN ENVIRONMENT

14 R. Buckminster Fuller: education for COMPREHENSIVITY 3

15 Eric A. Walker: engineers and the nation’s future 81

16 James R. Killian, Jr.: toward a working partnership

17 OF THE SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES 99

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19 R. Buckminster Fuller

20 Education for Comprehensivity

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