ABSTRACT

This address was delivered on 22 October 1951 to close the opening session of the twentieth New York Herald Tribune Forum. The theme of this three-day symposium at the Waldorf-Astoria (where Russell was staying: see Plate XIII) was “Balancing Moral Responsibility and Scientific Progress”. Russell was repeatedly drawn towards this perennially perplexing problem, most recently for the benefit of the New York audiences who heard him speak on “The Impact of Science on Society” at Columbia University (during his previous American lecture tour). In the present paper he argued that the “fundamental reason” why the necessary equilibrium remained elusive was that “we have not adapted our mentality to our technique. We still allow ourselves ways of thinking and feeling that were appropriate in a technically simpler age” (220: 36–8). According to Helen H. Waller, the chair of Russell’s speech (and director of the annual forum to which it was a contribution), the quest for balance between science and morals was something that his “life work symbolizes” (1951, 49).