Who is the intended audience of the book impact of science on society by Bertrand Russell
Answers
This book was a hardcover discovered among the collection of my grandfather when I was 14; I did not, could not return the book to him. I'm sure I still have it in my bookshelf back in India, behind a pair of glass doors, slowly getting eaten by termites and moths, no one has touched it for at least 35 years. The book had a maroon spine on its jacket, and a photo of Russell on the front cover, wearing a starched collar, with a quizzical smile, a pair of sparkling eyes.
It certainly was the most influential book for me at that age.
Russell's passion for objectivity, his sweeping summary of the impact of past scientific inquiry on human civilization until the second world war, the mischief science creates in times of war, the mischief by religion, the philosophical implications of the then 'new' physics relativity and quantum mechanics engaging vision of the possible impact of science on human happiness, his utter despair in finding no reason to think that the new science will bring happiness instead of pain his arguments about the futility of possessing nuclear weapons (this was written in 1953), increasing segregation of the human society into two classes of nations: the haves and the have-nots, and perpetual war among them, his predictions of the rise of belief- and ideology-driven politics, the threat of mutual annihilation by the accidental or deliberate use of the nuclear arsenal--his incredible prescience was to me a staggering revelation of acute intelligence.
He became my life-long hero.
The book is still relevant today.
In this connection it is interesting to compare Russell's thoughts in 1953 with that of another giant intellect of today Sydney Brenner, a Nobel Laureate, who wrote an essay with the inverse title Impact of Society on Science Certainly not having the scope of Russell's book, Brenner discusses some of the same hopelessness of solving societal problems by science, though both appear to believe that it should be possible.
Both are incurable optimists.