Word: piel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Piel does not advocate abandonment of secrecy; but he warns that the American military classifications system is clumsy and misused, while Cold War security measures are encroaching on the rights of the individual scientists as free citizens...
...publisher of "The Scientific American," Gerard Piel has a professional interest in problems of information exchange, not only between scientists, but between the researchers and laymen. Most of his nineteen essays collected here discuss the conflicting demands of national security and intellectual freedom. Security demands secrecy; science requires an unrestricted interchange of ideas on an international level. In recent years, the two have seemed irreconcilable...
...both Piel and C. P. Snow, Science and Government, secrecy creates a further danger necessarily limits the number of people making high-level scientific decisions; government becomes "a private affair." This is undesirable in a state ruled by democratic principle. It leads to a high percentage of unwise decisions, a tendency towards authoritarianism, or, at least complacent and uninformed voters...
...layman is hampered by ignorance, the researcher is truly strung by elaborate checking , loyalty oaths, and clear procedures. Piel deplores "the promotion of conform and notes: "Everyone who freedom and science must be concerned at the present authoritan drift in our culture." Undeniably, scientific effort is impaired. The individual scientist is regarded as a natural resource, a weapon to "give the modern state its military power. This is not healthy. Furthermost there is excessive emphasis on technology and applied science, with responding neglect of pure science...
...there is another, and more significant flaw in Ardrey's thesis. It must be clear to any careful observer that we are, in the words of Piel, editor of the Scientific American approaching a "propertyless" society. "The ownership of property," observed Piel, "is no longer the primary source of power, even economic power in our society. . . ." He goes on to note how modern consumers mortgage their homes, buy their cars on time and rent a good deal of what they need. He concludes that "the typical consumer owns no property in the classical meaning of the term...