ABSTRACT
WE who live in an age where science is recognized as a means of life or death, cannot fail to see all around us the consequences and even the instruments of science. That very fact, however, makes it extremely difficult to disentangle science from the social and economic factors with which it is entwined. Scientists themselves are at a loss to know how far their responsibility extends into the consequences for good or evil of discoveries and applications often made more collectively than individually. There is no recognized means of assessing the amount of a community's resources that should go to science, how it should be apportioned or indeed whether the whole matter should not be left to chance, as it has been so largely in the past.
