Scientific Frontiers and National Frontiers: A Look Ahead
Article Summary and Author Biography
Science is the most communal of human endeavors. The vast structures of physics and biology assembled in this century were put together piece by piece by countless people whose identity has by this time been forgotten. The major figures, whose names are stamped there perhaps forever, were gifted in being able to figure out where the key pieces would fit, but the pieces themselves came from other minds and hands. Albert Szent-Georgi once remarked: "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
Lewis Thomas, M.D., is Chancellor of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Dr. Thomas is the author of Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony, and other works. This article is adapted from his Elihu Root Lectures, delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations on November 1, 3 and 9, 1983. Copyright (c) 1984, Lewis Thomas.
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