The Discovery of Science

The scientist has set himself the problem of finding out as much as he can about the world around him and understanding this as well as he can. In accepting this problem, value judgments are involved which, in turn, involve an emotional component. Among the emotional components are: acceptance for its own sake of the discipline of the fact; subject to this discipline, a sense of complete freedom; the challenge of difficulty; the sense of adventure in penetrating into the unknown. In the passion of the scientist for discovering facts irrespective of whether they are pleasant or unpleasant lies the source of the undoubted incompatibility between scientists and non-scientists. One of the tasks of society is to find how to live with this incompatibility.