Is science a religion?

We live in an Age of Faith, not in God but in Science. If most of us are still capable of facing the mounting problems of the world today with relative. equanimity, this is because we believe that Science will provide us with the means of solving them: half a millennium ago we would have expected God to do so.

Scientists are functionally the priests of our industrial society. It is only they who are capable of mobilising, for our purposes, the limitless powers of Science, of acting thereby as the intermediaries in our relationship with this new and formidable deity.

It is not surprising that their writings are imbued with an aura of sanctity previously reserved for the holy texts of the established religions. If a proposition is classified as 'scientific', then it must be true, indeed incontestable. If, on the other hand, something is branded as 'unscientific' then it must be the work of a charlatan. This has provided the Scientific Establishment with the power to prevent any undesired deviation from scientific orthodoxy. In the same way, the Catholic Establishment of the Middle Ages would excommunicate a heretic whose teachings constituted a challenge to their authority.

Indeed, one finds among the annals of the Scientific World some which are strangely reminiscent of mediaeval witch-hunts. Consider, for instance the response of the Scientific Establishment to the publication of Limits to Growth. It was branded as unscientific by both Nature and Science, the world's two most prestigious scientific journals.

In Britain the inquisition was led by Lord Zuckerman, once Chief Scientist to the British Government. It is easy to see how he exploited the terms 'scientific' and 'unscientific' to discredit this very important work in the following outbursts in a speech delivered in Stockholm during the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment:

"Our newspapers urged on by a plethora of pseudoscientific books, articles and speeches are filled with items which warn us that irreversible damage is being done to our physical environment ... I have referred to a book Limits to Growth which has been hailed . . . mainly by the scientifically uninitiated as a scientific statement about man's environmental problems . . . for my part I have no hesitation in saying that I am among those professional students of environmental problems who dismiss the book as unscientific nonsense" [1]

What Is 'Science'?

In view of this, it is clearly important that one should know just what 'Science' is, and precisely how one determines what constitutes a 'scientific' proposition.

'Science' does not appear to have ever been adequately defined. In general, it seems to involve the accumulation of knowledge. But what is knowledge? Here we encounter a major snag: to answer this question we must leave what is generally regarded as the realm of 'exact science', and enter that of Epistemology or the Theory of Knowledge.

For scientists to regard Epistemology as being outside the scope of Science is to renounce the responsibility for examining the assumptions on which their work is based, for determining in fact, to what extent it is justified.

This task is delegated to people who, working outside the field of Science, know very little about it, and who like most specialists today, tend to regard their field of study as largely autonomous, as something that can be studied in isolation from everything else. As a result one finds little in current epistemological writings which can serve to provide a theoretical basis for Modern Science - a lamentable situation. As Einstein wrote "Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology - in so far as it is thinkable at all - is primitive and muddled."

What is Knowledge?

Knowledge is clearly some sort of information. To qualify as knowledge, however, this information must display certain characteristics. According to Ayer, who appears, to be one of the principal spokesmen for the modern school of Empiricism, it must be true, we must know it to be true, and for the right reasons. This implies, above all, that knowledge is conscious information of some sort. This is presumably the only type of information which can be studied empirically. Also, it is by basing one's behaviour exclusively on such information that one is regarded as acting 'rationally'.

If epistemologists knew a little about such subjects as Cybernetics, Ethology and Psychology, they would realise that conscious information plays by no means a determining role in the behaviour of even the most sophisticated members of the species 'Homo sapiens'.

To understand the use of conscious information without reference to that of unconscious information is simply not possible. In fact to understand the use of information in the brain is difficult without examining it as part of a general theory of information, which must mean examining the way, it is built up and made use of by systems at all levels of organisation. Such a study would reveal that information in the brain is built up and used in very much the same way as it is in a gene-pool or a fertilized egg and that there is only one way of organising and using information among natural systems.

Control

The reason for this is that information is only built up for one purpose, and that is to constitute a model of the relationship of the system, of which it is part, with its particular environment. Information is, in fact, of no value by itself as a basis for behaviour. To identify a technological device as being a nuclear power station, for instance is of no value if one has not previously built up a model of the relationship between a nuclear power station, the biosphere of which we are part and the rest of the technosphere of which it is part. Only in this way can one understand what are its implications and hence how we should react towards these diabolical contrivances. It is a serious illusion to suppose that the mere fact of attaching a label to something provides information about it.

If information is only built up for a single purpose, this is also true of the model of which it is part. A model is only built up for the purpose of serving as a basis for the control of a system's behaviour towards its environment.

This whole notion of control is largely ignored by epistemologists as well as many scientists who have implicitly adopted the empiricist position. There is a good reason for this. If a system is controlled, it must mean that it is goal-directed or purposive, for what else can control mean but to keep something on its correct course? And how can it be kept on its correct course if it doesn't have one? The goal, needless to say cannot be pin-pointed in space-time. It is simply that course along which discontinuities and their corrections are reduced to a minimum. By taking such a course a system is capable of maintaining its basic structure in the face of environmental challenges, i.e., of remaining stable.

It is also by taking such a course that free energy is reduced to a minimum over a long period. In this way the system remains in four-dimensional equilibrium with its environment. This principle of directiveness is irreconcilable with empiricist philosophy, since it cannot be induced on the basis of observation, i.e., according to what empiricists regard as the only legitimate way of building up knowledge.

Also, it justifies a methodology for building up knowledge which is in competition with induction. I refer to deduction from the general principle cited. Thus one could postulate that to maintain its stability in specific environmental conditions a system must be able to achieve a given set of sub-goals. A specific behavioural act could therefore be explained in terms of its contribution to the achievement of a sub-goal, and judged in accordance with its ability to do so. This is in fact the cybernetic as opposed to the reductionist approach.

To reject the directivity principle, however, is to reject the very principle of organising information, and hence, among other things, the possibility of Science. The reason for this is very simple. Information is built up out of data, the raw materials of information. Data, as we shall see are interpreted in the light of a system's model of its relationship with its environment, and then constitutes information. This means putting 'mental order', I suppose one might call it, into what might previously have appeared to be random data. This is only adaptive if this order corresponds to something, i.e., if it reflects an ordered situation. Since behaviour is, by its very nature, dynamic, i.e., involves change, this change must be orderly which means that it must be heading in a given direction.

The mechanism of control

Cybernetics has probably contributed more than any other discipline to the unification of Science by demonstrating that control, at all levels of organisation, is achieved in the same way that, in fact, the basic cybernetic model is of universal application.

Data are obtained, transduced and interpreted. A hypothesis or model is postulated and projected back onto the data, followed by a modified hypothesis and a further projection. Each time the hypothesis is made to fit better with the general model of the system - either by modifying the former or the latter. This can be repeated over and over again, and in this way there will be a continual monitoring of a series of even better hypotheses formulated after successive accretions of information.

This process gives rise to a damped system, i.e., one in which errors are progressively reduced. If interpretation is taken as tending towards a position of four-dimensional equilibrium, i.e., along an equilibrium course - which we can represent by a straight line - it will in fact take the form of a series of oscillations of ever-diminishing size - tending towards the reduction of errors - i.e., the development of an ever better representation of the system.

On the other hand, if this mechanism does not function properly, i.e., if the system gets out of control, then the oscillations will increase in size. This of course cannot continue indefinitely, the discontinuities would become increasingly insupportable and the system would eventually collapse - just as is happening to our society today.

At this point it might be worth noting that for two million years or so, human social systems displayed considerable stability. Unstable social systems appear to have been largely confined to recent times, i.e. to the period following the Neolithic revolution. [2] Even during this period, traditional societies which have succeeded in remaining outside the orbit of mainstream civilisations have continued to display considerable stability. Such stability can only be achieved in one way, and that is by the operation of a control mechanism of the type described above.

This mechanism is provided by its culture, of which an essential component is a specific world-view or model of the society's relationship with its environment, a corresponding goal-structure and a means of achieving it. [3]

Science appears to be an attempt to replace the cultural information which makes up traditional worldviews which is very different in the case of each traditional society with a single organisation of information which should theoretically serve each of them equally well. It is an attempt, in fact, to substitute objective for subjective information as a basis for control.

Such a substitution has many implications, which I shall look into in this. article. First of all, however, let us consider what can conceivably justify it.

Epistemologically, the answer is fairly obvious. Traditional information does not qualify as knowledge. It is only true vis-à-vis a largely subconscious and very subjective model and not vis-à-vis a conscious objective one.

It involves reference to such things as Gods and spirits whose presence is empirically unverifiable, while it establishes a strange set of cause and effect relationships between men's ritual activities, the behaviour of these Gods and spirits and day to day biological-social and ecological events, which can be shown to be 'irrational'.

Objective truth must be the overriding criterion for judging the validity of information. We all assume that this must be so.. . . but why? On what is this assumption based? I shall show in this article that this is epistemologically unjustified, in fact that it is a pure act of faith.

If cultural information is organised subjectively rather than objectively, it provides a society with a very restricted view of its environment, that which it has so far required for its own specific adaptive purposes. If information be organised objectively, it is assumed that it provides a faithful reproduction of the outside world, which should provide the basis for a much wider range of adaptations, enabling a society in possession of this objective information to adapt to all possible eventualities.

For this to be so, a number of obvious conditions must clearly be satisfied:

• The first is that objective information can be organised to constitute an effective model of Man's relationship with his environment.
• The second is that this model can effectively be made use of to control this relationship.
• The third is that this would enable Man and his society to adapt to important and improbable changes, i.e., that there are no other limits to their potential for adaptation. I shall show in this article that all these assumptions are false.

Science has not provided so far a means of controlling society

We are living in an age in which public policy has, for the first time, been largely influenced by Science. In spite of this, society is increasingly out of control, hence unstable, and the discontinuities we are subjected to are on an ever increasing scale, so much so that we are well on the way to social and ecological collapse. On strictly empirical grounds one cannot avoid the conclusion that Science has been a failure.

Objective truth

Objective truth does not appear to be the relevant criterion for judging the value of information used by natural systems. Genetic information is not objective. It is specific to a particular individual as a member of a particular species. Cultural information is not objective either. In fact one can go further and say that as the biosphere has evolved out of the primaeval dust, as complexity and variety have built up, so has the corresponding subjective information determining this evolutionary development. To substitute a single organisation of objective information for the multitudinous organisations of subjective information, which are at present used to control the behaviour of natural systems, would be to reverse evolutionary trends and hence to foster informational entropy.

It could be objected that objective information also displays order or negentropy. This is true only in the sense that the technosphere displays order. Order is but another word for organisation. Things are organised for a particular purpose to satisfy a particular goal. Random organisation is a contradiction in terms. Now the goal of the technosphere is very different from that of the biosphere. The former is designed to provide Man, one of the myriad forms of life which inhabit this planet, with the maximum comfort and convenience, whereas the latter being concerned with the maintenance of its overall stability is concerned with catering for the requirements of all, not just one of the forms of life which constitute it. They all have an essential function to fulfil within it.

Both organisations of matter are in fact in competition with each other since the former can only maintain itself by extracting resources from the latter and consigning to it its waste products. From the point of view of the biosphere the technosphere constitutes waste or randomness or in fact entropy. Similarly from the point of view of that organisation of subjective information associated with the biosphere, objective information constitutes entropy. It has played no role in building up the biosphere on the other hand without it there would be no technosphere.

Why should this be so?

In the biosphere, a system could adapt either by modifying its environment to satisfy its own requirements or by itself undergoing change to satisfy these requirements of a changed environment. In practice both strategies are resorted to. We have seen that the justification for Science must be to permit rapid and radical adaptation which a traditional culture would not do. When rapid and radical change is required however the former strategy is the only possible one. It is quicker and easier to adapt man to living in a cold climate, for instance, by building him houses with central heating, double glazing, etc. than by bringing about those physical changes in him which would enable him to support the cold weather. Thus in practice objective information simply permits environmental change. If this environmental change were not regarded as desirable there would be no reason for replacing traditional subjective information with scientific objective information. Objective information can thereby serve but as a basis for reducing the order of the biosphere of which we are part.

Practical people will not accept so strongly worded a condemnation of the technosphere. They will insist that by clever management it is possible to reconcile the two, to achieve some sort of a compromise between the rival goals of the biosphere and the technosphere. Besides it will be maintained, human ingenuity, combined with omnipotent Science must be able to compensate for the reduced stability of the biosphere, by devising means of correcting the resultant discontinuities.

The failure of Science could be rectified if our knowledge were improved, if Science were reorganised, if, for instance, it could be unified to provide us with a single model of the biosphere in its interrelationship with the technosphere.

This too was my feeling twenty years ago. In fact, I spent many years working out a general model of behaviour which led to my book (unpublished) The Theory of a Unified Science. Since then, however, my views have changed. This is why.

The Empiricist thesis

Firstly it would mean abandoning the empiricist thesis which underlies science. According to Empiricist epistemology, knowledge can only be obtained by observation. This thesis is manifestly false. The child's mind at birth is far from being the 'tabula rasa' which this would imply; for instance, a child is, and must be, in possession of a rudimentary model of its relationship with its environment. This has been shown to be true experimentally. Fantz, [4] for instance showed that chicks are born with a tendency to peck at certain objects rather than others - but we do not need such experience to prove this point.

If a species is to be stable which means if it is to display continuity, i.e., remain stable, then its behaviour must be based on information which itself displays continuity. Each generation must inherit information which reflects the experience of its ancestors going back into the mists of time. That is why genetic information is so stable. If it were more plastic and could permit adaptations to changes based on the experience of one or two generations only it might give rise to adaptations to what could turn out to be freak conditions unlikely ever to recur - such as the situation created by our industrial society. Its behaviour would display no continuity. It would be unstable - and hence could not survive.

Building up information means improving the model so that it may serve as a basis for ever more adaptive behaviour. This improvement, contrary to what Empiricists may think, does not simply consist in accumulating more data but also in organising it within the model.

The establishment of a new relationship between two of the variables of a model, for instance, permitting an improved explanation of certain observable data must provide information without involving the simultaneous detection of data - thinking - in other words.

The notion that all information is only built up by observation is thus simply not true. However one can go further than this. What is the status of that information which is built up by observation?

The first feature is its subjectivity. Detection is a directive process. It does not consist of randomly accumulating data, but rather of isolating from all possible data that minute fraction of it which appears relevant to a system's behaviour pattern. Thus, as Judson Herrick points out:

"The skin is sensitive to mechanical vibrations up to 1,552 per second, but beyond that point feels only a steady push. The ear is aware of sound travelling by wave lengths of 13mm up to 12,280mm, but does not hear sounds below or above these limits. The skin is aware of heat-waves only from .0008 to .lmm long. The eyes take cognizance of light waves from 0008mm to .0004mm, but miss electric waves, ultra-violet waves, x-rays, gamma-rays and cosmic rays, running from wavelengths of .0004 to .000,000,000,008mm". [5]

This first genetically determined selection is complemented by a further ontogenetically and largely culturally determined one. Thus at any given moment we can detect but a minute fraction of those data which we are genetically equipped to detect - those which may appear relevant to our behaviour in those particular circumstances in which we find ourselves at a given moment.

This leads one to the essential consideration that detection can only occur on the basis of a pre-existing model, more precisely two models - a genetic one and one which might be called a cerebral or cultural one, in terms of which is calculated the relevance of different data to a system's behaviour pattern - yet another reason for rejecting the Empiricist thesis.

Data in fact are detected and interpreted in order to confirm or invalidate the model postulated. One might however ask on what basis is the model postulated? The answer is that which appears most probable in the light of the model one has built up during the course of one's experience.

A brain, like any other organisation of information made use of by natural systems, acts among other. things, as a probability calculator. [6]

Contrary to what most people think, scientists proceed in precisely the same way - they select data on the basis of a preconceived model - partly objective, probably partly subjective too, in terms of which the data are subsequently interpreted.

Indeed, scientific theories, rather than being reached 'inductively', in accordance with empiricist theories, must be regarded as postulated, as the most probable explanation of certain data on the basis of their specific model of the world about them, in other words, deduced from this model.

In this way, Le Verrier postulated, by purely mathematical means, the then unknown planet Neptune as an explanation of certain otherwise inexplicable disturbances of other planets. Later, ". . . when the German astronomer Gelle directed his telescope, to the spot in the night sky that had been figured out by Le Verrier, he saw there a tiny speck that changed its position slightly from night to night, and the planet Neptune was discovered (1846)". [7]

Dirac postulated the positron as the most elegant way of explaining certain atomic phenomena inexplicable in terms of existing variables.

Epicurus and his disciple Lucretius postulated the atom, and Bohr postulated the modern version of this ancient hypothesis. Watson and Crick proceeded in the same manner when developing the genetic code, as is revealed in their book, The Double Helix.

These discoveries are well-known. There is a tendency, however, to regard them as scientific curiosities - and as exceptions to the general rule that science develops inductively by the meticulous examination of impartially accumulated data, in accordance with the Empiricist thesis. I think that on the contrary, they are merely striking examples of what is, the only possible method of science.

Every scientific proposition is in fact a hypothesis. The objective value of this hypothesis depends on that of the model on which it is based. If it were based on a fully integrated general model of the biosphere then it would have considerable value. But such a model is not available. More often than not, for reasons we shall look into later, it is based not only on incomplete information but on incomplete subjective information. A scientist's interpretation of a situation tends to be that which, above all, satisfies his personal psychological requirements. The distinction often made between 'scientific facts' and 'mere hypotheses' is totally unjustified epistemologically. If knowledge is acquired by observation (and observation, as I have shown is but an interpretation of data, i.e., a hypothesis) knowledge must consist of hypotheses.

Consider one of Lord Zuckerman's 'scientific facts', taken from the same speech at Stockholm. He points to the "increasing physical and intellectual violence to which we are all subjected" and attributes this to the frustration of not being able to increase our standard of living fast enough. He points to the disparity of living standards between and within countries and argues that if this were reduced, violence would cease to be a problem.

This is clearly one of a large number of possible interpretations of the available data, not that which is best reconcilable with available knowledge, but that which, best suits his desire to prove that the Limits to Growth argument is wrong and that economic growth is necessary.

What is more, this hypothesis will be influenced by all sorts of subjective factors such as what one expects to see, what other people persuade us we should be seeing, etc. Perception and, by the same token, the interpretations it gives rise to are purely subjective and bear no relationship whatsoever with the objective measuring rod which Empiricists make them out to be. [8]

On the contrary, rather than provide objective information on the thing perceived, perception tends to provide instead, objective information on the personality of the perceiver - as is pointed out by Witken who wrote a book to prove this point.

Perception also is functionally the same thing as computer simulation. Simulation is selective since it only deals with data which can be interpreted in such a way that they give rise to a change in the value of one or more of the variables used in the model. The implications of this change are calculated in terms of all the other changes this must bring about, to the value of the other variables in terms of which it is interpreted.

There is a big difference between the two processes however - for perception is simulation on a purely subjective model and cannot thereby provide a basis for building up objective information or knowledge, while computer simulation is supposed to be objective. This is of course the ultimate reason for rejecting Empiricism. The implications however are obvious. What is required is a means of by-passing perception, of replacing it with an objective means of building up information. But is this possible?

A first step is to replace gradually the subjective vocabulary which we have inherited as part of our cultural heritage and in terms of which we persist in describing the world about us. I refer to such words as 'mind,' 'consciousness,' and practically all the other terms used by Empiricist philosophers, not to mention sociologists.

This has been happening for some time. Indeed, with the development of knowledge, man's view of the world becomes couched in ever less subjective terms, i.e., terms which are ever less those of our own personal experience. As Konrad Lorenz says, "Every step of knowledge in physics means 'taking off a pair of glasses'." [9]

Von Bertalanffy writes:

"It is an essential characteristic of science that it progressively de-anthropomorphizes, that it progressively eliminates those traits which are due to specifically human experiences. Physics necessarily starts with the sensory experience of - the eye, the ear, the thermal sense, etc., and thus builds up fields like optics, acoustics, the theory of heat, which correspond to the realms of sensory experience.

Soon, however, these fields fuse into such that do not have any more relation to the ‘visualizable' or 'intuitable': optics and electricity fuse into electro-magnetic theory; mechanics and the theory of heat into statistical thermodynamics, etc." [10]

Thus as science advances, the variables used are further and further divorced from those of our experience. As one would expect, it is in modern physics, the most advanced of all disciplines, that this tendency is most accentuated. Thus the physicist's concept of 'time' as dependent on velocity and as inseparable from space, the pi-meson with its lifespan of two millionth of a second; the electron that weighs only a billionth of a billionth of a gram; and anti-particles that may run counter to time and that may originate in the future and become extinct in the past - all of these are obviously totally outside the world of our experience.

Compartmentalisation

Another great barrier to the unification of Science is the practice of dividing up knowledge into separate disciplines each dealing with a set of things that appear to have something in common. This is a direct consequence of the adoption of Empiricism.

The biosphere is a single integrated system made up of closely integrated and hierarchically organised sub-systems and sub-subsystems. It is dynamic, not static, and is therefore the product of a single integrated process. Quite clearly it cannot be understood in terms of these separate disciplines.

Indeed changes occurring within a specific field must inevitably cause changes in other fields about which a specialist would have very little knowledge. In addition changes in other fields would also cause changes in his field which he would have no means of understanding. As a result specialists are not only incapable of interpreting and predicting changes occurring outside their particular field of study but also, and this is possibly even worse, within it.

This means that the charges condoned and even proposed by specialists and in particular that brand deferred to as experts, are based on what may occasionally be objective information, but are necessarily only part of the relevant objective information and this, as already shown cannot serve as the basis of action. These arguments may be true but they must of necessity present only part of the truth. Modern Science is not exact at present but an accumulation of half-truths - and it is on the basis of these half-truths that scientists trying to control the world, and as a result bringing about its annihilation.

How can we get round, this? As we will see to design a unified Science using a general behaviour model is relatively simple. I could provide you with the basis of it right now. But it would never be accepted let alone made use of. One reason is that it would require multi-disciplinary cooperation.

Unfortunately, specialists in the different disciplines have developed different terminologies and methodologies and contact between them is at best, impossible save on a superficial basis. This situation is getting worse rather than better. Prestige is inspired by becoming more technological and more esoteric. What we are in fact witnessing is the operation of a basic technological tendency towards originality. Non-specialists must be kept out of one's territory, and ambitious men go so far as to carve a niche in their own academic territory on the slightest pretext. Look at cybernetics. Here at last was a tool which could be used for unifying the sciences. It was not to be. Not only has it become increasingly uneconomical, but its domain has already been sliced up by ambitious academics. Von Bertalanffy called his theory General Systems, Forrester Systems Dynamics, and I am sure there will be lots more. In this way, instead of merging the various disciplines it has actually given rise to at least three new-ones.

Why we can predict the failure of multi-disciplinary research, with total confidence, however, is that the different disciplines having evolved in vacuo, are not compatible with each other.

Modern Economics is incompatible with both Anthropology and Ecology. Modern Medicine is irreconcilable with Evolutionary Theory. Modern Dentistry with its dependence on X-Rays with Radiobiology etc.

For effective multi-disciplinary work to occur, specialists would have to admit that many of the principles on which their disciplines are based are in fact false. Can we expect them to do so? Can we really expect people who have established a reputation in a particular field after years of hard work to admit that their work is based on faulty assumptions and has thereby been in vain? Of course not. They can be counted upon to rationalise any extraneous information which appears to menace their professional status in such a way that it will cease to do so.

This is precisely how the experts have reacted to Limits to Growth and our own Blueprint for Survival. The mental acrobatics they are willing to resort to in order to rationalise their own world-view in the face of massive evidence which renders it objectively untenable is truly astonishing, and in a way rather pathetic. The effect of this natural psychological tendency however is to render multidisciplinary research largely impracticable.

Atomisation

The empiricist thesis also leads to atomisation, i.e., to the breaking down of things into their constituent parts for the purpose of studying them in controlled laboratory conditions.

I am not suggesting that this is not useful, only that it is not sufficient. This provides information on the constituent sub-systems, but it provides no information on the role, played by the system in the larger systems of which it is a part. Often this is not even conceivable since we are dealing with systems of a large and diffuse nature such as human societies and eco-systems which simply cannot be examined in controlled laboratory conditions. By looking at the parts however one can get very little idea of the whole.

What is particularly significant is that many scientists ignore the very existence of such systems. Indeed, the very concept of an ecosystem is probably less than 30 years old.

If a set of systems are part of a larger one it means that they are subjected to a particular set of constraints which will enable them to act for certain purposes at least as a unit. Order is in fact defined as the influence of the whole over the parts. The fact that we have not recognised that we are part of a larger unit called an eco-system means that we are totally unaware of a whole set of constraints which we must observe if we are not to destroy the larger system of which we are but the differentiated parts.

Even more astonishing of course is the fact that the importance of the social system is not generally understood by the scientific community. It is generally considered that any group of heterogeneous people can constitute a society so long as they occupy the same area. The notion that a society is a behavioural unit in its own right, a natural system in the sense that a biological organism is a natural system, is accepted by but a small minority of thinking people with a knowledge of the functioning of the tribal societies in which man has been organised during 99 percent of his tenancy of this planet. Yet this is unquestionably so, and the fact that it has not been accepted means that we have ignored yet another set of extraordinarily important constraints to which our behaviour is normally subjected.

To understand the behaviour of man without reference to the larger system of which he is part, is like trying to understand the behaviour of a cell without reference to the organ or tissue and the biological organism to which it belongs. It is, in fact, quite obviously impossible.

Thus, the ills that industrialised society is suffering from such as crime, delinquency, alcoholism, drugs, etc., cannot conceivably be understood by our scientists - unless it be first postulated that society is a natural system which provides its members with the requisite social environment. Only then can these ills be correctly interpreted as the pathological manifestation of social disintegration, and from the point of view of the victims, as the symptoms of social deprivation. Instead these ills will continue to be interpreted as the signs of material deprivation: - a convenient diagnosis in a society geared to the production of material goods, but one which, by causing further industrialisation must lead to further social disintegration and correspondingly aggravate the ills which this must give rise to.

Continuity

In addition, one cannot understand the working of a system by examining it, without reference to its past. For a system is not autonomous. It has inherited a model of its relationship with its environment which provides it with a goal-structure and a set of instructions on how to achieve these goals.

As I have already stated, this model reflects the system's experience over a very long period. In this sense a system exists in time as well as in space. That, which is visible to us, and which is actually there, is but a part of it, a very small one at that, and to understand its functioning it should be best regarded as only a link in a spatio-temporal continuum. This is in fact the case of a traditional human society. A tribe is made up of the living, the dead and the yet to be born. Only in this way can it display continuity or stability. When a society disintegrates, it does so in time as well as in space.

Living in the cultural void created by industrialisation we are not only alienated from our fellow men, but also from our ancestors and increasingly from our children. In fact, we are temporal as well as spatial, isolates. What is more, the information which a system has inherited from its past can give rise to a very large number of possible systems of which it constitutes but one possibility. Each cell for instance starts off with the full complement of hereditary information which would enable it to form part of any specialised issue within the organism of which it is part. Slowly it learns to fulfil a particular function, and thereby comes to make use of a specialised part - constituting but a minute fraction of available information. The same occurs at other levels of organisation.

A population, for instance, makes use of but a minute fraction of the information contained in the gene-pool. No system can be understood however, unless one takes into consideration all the alternative systems which the information its development was based on, could have given rise to.

The unification of science must involve building a model of the behaviour of that all-encompassing system which is the biosphere, and as we have seen, atomisation, a methodology indisassociably linked with empiricism cannot enable one to understand the behaviour of such a system.

Measurement

It can be argued that any 'deficiency' in perception can be made up for- by measurement. Measurement in fact has become a veritable fixation among scientists today, so much so that it is seriously held that propositions which cannot be measured, cannot thereby fall within the scope of science. Unfortunately, a number of important variables cannot be measured. How does one measure the information in the cultural pattern of a traditional society? How does one measure the bonds which hold together the different members of a family and which are extended to hold together the human community?

If only a fraction of the factors which would have to be taken into account in a general model of behaviour, are measurable, and can thereby be made use of for the formulation of scientific propositions this is tantamount to admitting that scientific behaviour must, by necessity, be based on partial information only - and cannot thereby serve as a basis for adaptive responses.

This is particularly true of the Limits to Growth model of Man's present predicament. One of the main criticisms levelled at this stage was that the values given to the variables were not based on sufficient evidence.

The basic argument of Limits to Growth however is not affected by the discovery that the world's resources of copper, bauxite or manganese are higher than Meadows thought, nor for that matter that the environment can absorb more of the waste products of industrial processes than he and his colleagues had estimated. The model simply reveals that our society is heading in the wrong direction. The further it continues in this direction the greater will be our commitment to the use of resources which will be in increasingly short supply, and the greater the amount of waste which it will have to consign to an environment with an increasingly limited capacity to absorb it. The lesson to be drawn from this study is that we must cease moving in this direction, in fact that we must move in a totally opposite one.

Interpretation of measurements

There is no point in measuring things unless one knows what their value should be. Yet one cannot know the ideal value of any variable in a model representing a given system, unless one knows what are the values of the other variables and what are the relationships between them. An individual measurement is simply o f no value.

What is important is to determine the principles underlying the functioning of a natural system, to establish what are the -relevant variables and how they are related. What the actual values should be is the function of so many petty technical factors, that it is not in measurements which conflict with cherished subjective beliefs, tend to be interpreted or rationalised in such a way that they cease to do so. Defenders of industrialisation still maintain for instance that the cancer rate is not increasing in industrial society. What has increased, they maintain, is our ability to diagnose it-This myth is only being exploded as we are beginning to know more about the health of tribal societies.

In the same way Zuckerman refuses to admit that lead poisoning is becoming an increasing menace. He writes: "The risk of being poisoned today is probably as small as at any time since lead started to be mined. But we have now developed the ability to detect the presence of this element. And of others, like mercury in very small concentrations." [14] Measurements, in fact, are but precise means of detection. As such, they provide data, not information. This is obtained by interpreting them in the light of a largely subjective model.

Logistics

In addition the measurement of the parts of a system in isolation from each other is a vain task, for purely logistical reasons. The number of interrelationships between them simply defies calculation. Let us consider the problem of pollution. Is it in fact possible to examine in laboratory conditions the precise effect of introducing a new chemical substance into our environment? The answer is no. Man has already put over half a million pollutants into the environment and there are several thousand new ones every year.

The World Health Organisation, according to Laird, receives 2,000 to 3,000 new ones each year for examination. WHO does not have any research facilities of its own so that these products must be farmed out to be examined by independent laboratories. For both financial and administrative reasons less than ten per cent of them are examined in this way. What makes the problem particularly intractable is the synergy which often obtains between different combinations of pollutants.

Scientists are constantly discovering new synergic effects. . For instance, it was found that the combination of Benyspyrene with carbon dioxide can produce lung cancer in experimental animals. Also animals infected with flu virus can contract lung cancer if at the same time they have been exposed to artificial smog.

DDT is regarded as presenting little hazard to marine life by virtue of the fact that it is only very slightly soluble in water. However, it appears to be something like ten thousand, times more soluble in oil, which means that the combination of DDT and oil can prove lethal to many forms of sea life. [15]

Very disturbing is the synergy between asbestos and cigarette smoke. It has been estimated that asbestos workers who smoke have a 92 times greater risk of dying of lung cancer than men who neither work with asbestos nor smoke. [16]

In addition, it is logistically impractical to examine the long-term effect of sub-lethal doses of the different pollutants. Yet these are often as important if not more so than the more spectacular effects of large and sudden doses. For instance, a few parts per million of DDT in water can upset the temperature regulating mechanism of young salmon. [17]

Sub-lethal amounts of DDT can be lethal when associated with falling temperature and starvation. This apparently explains why in a river in New Brunswick in 1969 there was considerable mortality among salmon during the cold weather that followed an earlier fish kill attributed to high levels of DDT. [18]

Sub-lethal dosage of different pollutants can also have subtle effects on all sorts of behavioural mechanisms, on the ability of fish for instance to find their way about, or to detect the presence of other fish. Vorster considers "that the subtle effects of CHS on avian reproduction have a greater overall impact on bird populations than an acute dose on more indirect mortality, even though a bird kill may seem more- spectacular." [19]

Another problem is that of sampling. There is no guarantee that the levels measured during a given period are in fact representative. Thus analyses of Rhine water have so far identified some 200 different pollutants and these are regarded as constituting perhaps no more than one-tenth of those present. Dr. Sontheimer, a chemist involved in this work, has said they have no way of foreseeing "what will be floating in the river tomorrow ... A cleaning process that works one day, works badly the next day." [20] Moreover, even were it possible to devise the correct monitoring equipment and purification plant the cost would be prohibitive. Sontheimer considers that it would cost at least 10 times more to extract poisons already diluted in the Rhine than it would to keep them out.

The argument against measurement is very much that against atomisation. To understand how the world works one must look at the whole, not the parts, and proceed by deduction rather than induction.

Our understanding of pollution, for instance, will not be built by examining and measuring levels of individual pollution, but by examining the principle involved in the light of a general behavioural model of unified Science.

Centralisation of information

A further insurmountable problem is that arising from the centralisation of information. Indeed, the replacement of subjective information by objective information involves centralisation and this has many implications.

Consider the island of New Guinea where there are at present 700 different tribal groups, each with its own religio-culture. If the country were modernised these would inevitably be destroyed as the population was herded into large industrial complexes in which the children would soon be subjected to the standard western-type education.

These religio-cultures have developed over the course of thousands of years, not at random, but for a specific purpose - that of enabling the tribal groups in question to achieve a stable relationship with their environment. This they achieve remarkably well, as can be attested by all those who have examined the behaviour of tribal societies. However it is considered by us that their behaviour would be more adaptive were it based on a single organisation of information - the one which reflected objectively the world they, as well as countless other social groups throughout the world, happen to live in.

We forget, however that a society is a natural system, and it can be shown that its religio-culture is an integral part of it, that part which ensures its control. If one removes an integral part of a social control system in this way why not do the same with other systems? Why not for instance centralise genetic information? Why not start a world genetic data bank, which animals wishing to reproduce themselves in a modern and scientific way, whether they be fiddler crabs, dung beetles, or human beings, need but contact so as to obtain, by the aid of some giant computer, all the genetic information that they may require for this purpose?

However ridiculous this suggestion may sound, in behavioural terms the same principle is involved. In both cases it means counteracting the processes leading to the evolutionary development of normal control mechanisms. Such action is anti-evolutionary and can only lead to an increase in randomness.

Let us push the argument still further. If we deprive the inhabitants of New Guinea of their social control mechanisms, in the interests of centralisation, why don't we do the same for the other mechanisms involved in their life processes? Why do we not set up, for their benefit, a single computerised liver for instance, or a complete digestive system which would deal with all the digestive processes of the island's population thereby freeing it of digestive worries and letting it concentrate on more progressive activities such as watching TV or going to football matches?

Once more the example may appear absurd. But in cybernetic terms it is not absurd at all. Natural systems must be self-regulating if they are to be stable. A control mechanism is an integral part of a system. Remove it and the latter disintegrates, just as would an organism if one were to remove its liver or its digestive system. That is why traditional societies have not survived the destruction of their religio-cultures.

Differentiation

The original instructions initiating a behavioural process are differentiated during their implementation so as to adapt them to environmental requirements.

In this way the process cannot be explained solely on the basis of these instructions. Nor does the model on the basis of which the instructions are justified, suffice to justify the totality of instructions given at each level of organisation as behaviour proceeds. This principle is well illustrated by the behaviour of an army.

It is not even remotely. conceivable for a General to issue a complete and detailed Plan of Action, which will be observed to the letter at every echelon down to that of the section. The General cannot tell the exact nature of each problem that will be encountered by his men during the implementation of his instructions. He cannot know the position of each boulder, each tree, each bush which the individual soldiers will encounter -the physical strength of each individual opponent, the ruses he will resort to. In other words the imposition of a complete Blueprint from above is totally unadaptive. These instructions must be subjected to changes accommodating environmental influences, in precisely the same way as the cultural information on which is based a traditional cultural pattern is subject to evolutionary change.

In the case of an objective pattern of information, the mechanism for ensuring its differentiation is absent.

Consider that most of the disciplines, into which knowledge is at present divided, are based on a very insufficient sample of the total human experience. Modern economics, for instance, is based on the Western experience during the industrial age. [21] It is assumed indiscriminately to apply to traditional societies, and efforts to apply it in this way have led to social disruption on a considerable scale.

Modern agriculture has been devised largely on the basis of the experience of European countries enjoying a temperate climate. Its indiscriminate application to tropical areas has led to wholesale soil destruction and desertification.

Ideas of government are just as socio-centric and their exportation to Africa and Asia has led to the erosion of traditional cultures and to the setting up in their place of unstable political regimes which are nothing more than parodies of their already largely unsuccessful European counterparts.

All this is largely the result of the failure to adapt centralised objective knowledge to local requirements - to differentiate it, in fact, as subjective information is differentiated during the behavioural process among self-regulating natural systems.

The non-plasticity of generalities

The reason why the mechanism for adapting apparently objective generalities to environmental requirements is absent is that we cannot avoid regarding them subjectively as a priori truths, and thereby to rationalise any experiments which would invalidate the principle of their applicability. Why should this be so?

The reason is simple, the model used by the control mechanism of a natural system regardless of its level of complexity constitutes a hierarchical organisation of information. Information is organised in it, in accordance with its degree of generality. The more general the information the more important it is, since it colours all the other information in terms of which it is differentiated. Also, the more general it is, the longer the experience of the species or of the social group (in the case of cultural information), which it reflects. The more, therefore, it can be predicted that the circumstances to which it mediates adaptive behaviour are likely to be present, the less modifiable is this information.

Traditional man could predict with confidence that the circumstances that have been present for thousands of years are likely to continue being present. Their whole cultural pattern depends therefore on the continued presence of these circumstances, and little or no provision is made for their possible absence. Thus, the cultural pattern of a fishing society living on the edge of a lake would assume that the lake does not go dry and that its fish population is not depleted.

An Eskimo society living in the Arctic wastes will assume the particular climatic conditions in which it lives. Neither the fishing society, nor the Eskimo society can cater culturally for drastic changes in their basic relationship with their environment. If such changes occur, then the cultural patterns in question will collapse. But in terms of their very long experience there is no reason for them to suppose that it will.

The same is true of genetic information: Let us not forget that the generalities of our behaviour pattern are formulated in terms of our genetic information. This reflects the experience of a far longer period than does the cultural information. Its main feature is that it is largely non-plastic, i.e., it is not subject to change except over a very long period. If, for instance, it were modifiable on the basis of the experience of a single generation, then the species would cease to display any continuity; it would cease, in fact, to be stable.

When scientific information is built up, this essential fact is not taken into account. The generalities of a scientific model are supposed to be as modifiable as are its particularities, which are supposed to enable those who avail themselves of this information for the purpose of controlling our destinies, to adapt to the most radical environmental changes which a traditional culture could not hope to do. Needless to say, it doesn't work out that way.

A normal organisation of information will contain the optimum, not the maximum amount of information. A system will not develop the capacity to detect signals and interpret them if it does not have the capacity to adapt to the situations involved, or can only do so at the cost of disrupting its basic structure; which is precisely what its entire behaviour pattern is designed to avoid.

To change the generalities of a pattern of information and hence to seek to adapt to very radical changes, must lead to precisely this result. It is clear that the human brain is not designed to contain an objective pattern of information. It cannot handle its generalities. This explains why scientists are incapable of applying scientific method to the analysis of social questions on which their views are uncritically those of their particular sub-culture.

The objective particularities of their 'scientific' world-view are grafted on to the subjective generalities of that provided by their specific sub-culture. (This is particularly clear in the case of Lord Zuckerman's refusal to accept that pollution levels have gone up with industrialisation, and his other argument for still further industrialisation.)

Let us not forget that all behavioural processes, including 'learning' proceed from the general to the particular and once the generalities have been determined during infancy they are very difficult to modify, however impressive may be the scientific arguments produced for this purpose. Thus when a conflict arises, it is the subjective generalities which inevitably prevail and the subjective interpretation of any situation which they provide simply tends to be rationalised in the most convincing 'scientific' jargon.

That is why wisdom does not seem to grow with access to scientific knowledge, only ingenuity,, and ingenuity in the service of the wrong ideals, entertained on the basis of faulty assumptions, is a liability rather than an asset.

There is no mechanism for making use of objective knowledge for the purpose of control

Since the- human brain is incapable of containing an organisation of objective information, as is a cultural pattern, objective information if it is to be used must be imposed on the system from the outside. It cannot be part of .the system's normal control mechanism. But how is it to be imposed? No means is in fact available. Science does not provide a mechanism for ensuring that scientific knowledge is actually made use of. Regardless of the amount of objective knowledge available, both individuals and governments will tend to behave on the basis of the subjective information which is part of their phylogenetically and ontogenetically developed control mechanisms. The objective information they will simply rationalise to make it appear compatible with it.

If we have been persuaded that they can, it is that we have wrongly interpreted these particularities in such a way as to make them appear amenable to technological solutions which are the only ones our society can provide, i.e., the solutions which are prescribed by the subjective cultural pattern with which we have been imbued.

If we were to use available objective knowledge we would be forced in fact to reverse practically all existing trends. If we consider the problems that face Man today it can be shown that all our remedies are counter productive. Poverty for instance cannot be combated by providing people with more material goods.

First. of all we are reaching a point where it is increasingly difficult to keep up with the manufacture of these goods. Secondly their provision in the most lavish way has no effect whatsoever in reducing poverty. In America for instance there are 21 million people who are classified as 'poor'. The reason is firstly that the production of material goods changes the environment we live in, in such a way that more material goods are then required. Industrialisation creates needs faster than it can satisfy them.

Besides it is becoming increasingly clear that the misery we associate with poverty is the result of biological and social, rather than material, deprivation, while the production of material goods is the main cause of biological and social deprivation. In the same way, it can be shown that such basic problems as unemployment, [22] ignorance, [23] homelessness, [24] malnutrition [25] and disease [26] are on the increase throughout the world in spite of unprecedented investments in technology and industry and that they are not being resolved by technological and industrial progress.

On this basis the whole process should be reversed. If we do not reverse it, it is simply that we are incapable of making use of objective knowledge for the purpose of social control which continues and always will be assured on the basis of subjective information.

Cognitive maladjustment

If perception cannot serve as the basis for objective knowledge in normal conditions, in a period of rapid environmental change it eventually becomes even incapable of providing useful objective information. The principle involved I shall refer to as cognitive maladjustment.

It is generally held today that man is infinitely adaptable. This is only because the concept has never been adequately defined. If we define it as the capacity of a system to maintain its stability, then it is simply not true. Man, by means of science and technology is capable of counteracting discontinuities, but only at great cost. The cost is in terms of reduced stability and hence of greater discontinuities in the future, with which science and technology will eventually no longer be capable of dealing. What, in our industrial society, we take for adaptation, is usually pseudo-adaptation, as Boyden calls it.

The notion that Man is only capable of adapting to that range of environmental changes which can be catered for by a traditional cultural pattern, conflicts with the notion that the substitution of a pattern of objective knowledge for his traditional knowledge increases his range of adaptations.

In reality as we diverge from the environment to which Man has been adapted biologically, by means of phylogeny and ontogeny, and socially, by means of his society's cultural evolution, and his own education, so are we creating a host of maladjustments at different levels of organisation.

Thus, it is becoming increasingly apparent that a whole new range of diseases is appearing which is unknown in tribal societies living in their natural habitat - what is more the incidence of these diseases is increasing with per capita GNP. I refer to cancer; in particular cancer of the lungs and bowels, ischaemic heart disease, diverticulitis and tooth decay. These are already known among many researchers as the 'diseases of civilisation'. Boyden refers to them as the 'diseases of biological maladjustment'. [27] They appear to be, caused by environmental factors which were absent in primitive conditions, and what is more, the further we diverge from such conditions, as measured by per capita GNP, the greater is their incidence.

It is also becoming increasingly clear that we are faced with an ever increasing range of social pathologies, which were also absent in 'primitive' conditions. Their incidence also appears to increase with per capita GNP - I refer of course to crime, delinquency, alcoholism, illegitimacy, suicide, etc. These are best regarded as 'the diseases of social maladjustment'.

Contrary to what many might think, against these ills modern science is impotent. In spite of enormous investments in research no cures have been found nor are they likely to be. Remedies provided by science are technological ones whereas the problems are biological and social ones, requiring biological and social solutions. Technological remedies do no more than mask the symptoms of a disease thereby rendering it more tolerable and serving in this way to perpetuate it. Their effect is thereby to accommodate trends rather than reverse them, to permit in fact a yet further deviation from the optimum environment to which we have been adapted by evolution, and thereby further increasing maladjustments at all levels.

This is what happens, for instance, when we fight crime by building more burglar alarms and armoured cars. If a system is limited in its range of adaptations, for somatic reasons, so it is for informational ones. As the relationship between a system and its environment undergoes change, so is its model ever less capable of representing it.

This means that we become ever less capable of understanding our relationship with the constituents of our changing environment, which, to use Forrester's expression is becoming increasingly counterintuitive.

Thus, whereas our Palaeolithic ancestors had no difficulty in understanding what was their relationship with the cave bear and the woolly mammoth, we have no means of understanding what are the implications for us of subjecting our children to X-rays, of permitting a nuclear power station to be built in the vicinity of our homes, of allowing supersonic transport to erode the ozone belt which shields our planet from the sun's radiation, of cutting down the world's remaining stands of tropical forest, of countenancing, in fact, the industrialisation process itself.

Few people understand the full implications of these things, and hence, few are capable of reacting or influencing society to react adaptively to the strange new happenings which are rapidly transforming the world we live in. The result, of course, is that our scientifically influenced behaviour, which, as we have seen, remains based on subjective foundations, becomes increasingly unadaptive.

The development of science as part of the industrial process

It may well be that these arguments are all of purely academic interest, for the scientific adventure is condemned to failure by virtue of the fact that it can only occur in specific conditions - those, which in any case, must inevitably lead to the deterioration of the biosphere and if it continues for long enough, the annihilation of complex forms of life, such as man himself. I have argued elsewhere that there can be no flying saucers, since a planet whose inhabitants have developed the requisite technology, who are in fact technologically several decades, if not a century, in advance of us, would long ago have collapsed from the combined effects of environmental pollution, resource depletion, starvation and social chaos.

The same argument applies to the development of modern science. It could not have occurred in a hunter-gatherer society, nor in an idyllic rural society, but only as an integral part of that singular process of which technological development and industrial growth are the other necessary ingredients. That scientists, with all their remarkable ingenuity and capacity for improvisation, cannot deal with the problems which this process inevitably gives rise to, has been the subject of this paper. If they have an important contribution to make today it is in admitting their own inadequacies, in informing our political leaders, and the public at large that scientists are not the universal conjurors they are supposed to be.

Scientists must become sages rather than conjurors. They must re-assume responsibility for the study of the assumptions upon which their work is based, and organise objective knowledge into something approaching a general model of behaviour. Even if this will never be used to control our society, at least it may help divert the efforts of scientists from furthering the cause of technological development and industrial growth: for it will serve to reveal just how unjustified are such efforts. Further it will demonstrate that de-industrialisation is the only course of action which can be justified on the basis of available objective knowledge.

References

1. Lord Zuckerman. Speech at United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. Stockholm 1972.
2. Richard Lee and Erwin Devote. Man the Hunter. Aldine 1969.
3. Edward Goldsmith. 'The Study of Cultural Behaviour'. The Ecologist Vol. 3. No. 1.
4. Robert Frantz.. 'The Origin of Form Perception'. Scientific American May 1962.
5. Judson Herrick, quoted by Stuart Chase. The Tyranny of Words. Methuen, London 1943.
6. Edward Goldsmith. 'The Brain as a Probability Calculator'. The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 11.
7. Hans Reichenbach. The Rise of Scientific Philosophy. University Press, California 1958.
8. W. Ittleson and W. Kilpatrick. 'Experiment Experiments in Perception'. Scientific American August 1951.
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10. Ludwig von Bertalanffy. 'General Systems Theory: A Critical Review'. General Systems Yearbook. Vol. VII, 1962.
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12. Denis and Denella Meadows. Limits to Growth. Potomac Associates, Washington DC 1972.
13. Edward Goldsmith, Robert Allen et alia. A Blueprint for Survival. Tom Stacey, London 1972,
14. Lord Zuckerman, ibid.
15. SCEP. Man's Impact on the Global Environment. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1971.
16. Virginia Brodine. 'Point of Damage', Environment Vol. 14, No. 4.
17. Charles E Wurster. Effect of Pesticides in The Environmental Future, Nicholas Polunin. Macmillan 1973.
18. Charles F. Wurster, ibid.
19. Charles F, Wurster, ibid.
20. Notebook. The Ecologist, Vol. 3, No. 4.
21. Karl Polanyi. Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economics. Doubleday 1968.
22. Edward Goldsmith. 'The Ecology of Unemployment'. The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 11.
23. Edward Goldsmith, 'Education, What For?' The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 1.
24. Edward Goldsmith. Does Building Houses Cause More Homelessness? The Ecologist Vol. 3, No. 12.
25. Michael Allaby. Who Will Eat? Tom Stacey. London 1972.
26. John Powles. 'The Medicine of Industrial Man'. The Ecologist Vol. 2 No.10.