Two open letters

Your article in Physics Today on “Scientific Choice” touches some of the most important questions which we will face in the immediate future. You presented the situation in the clearest possible way and you pointed out the terrible difficulties which are inherent in any form of scientific planning. I agree with most of what you are saying and I like the way in which you said it. There is one important point, however, in which I cannot follow you. I accept your three “external criteria” for scientific choice: technological merit, scientific merit, and social merit. I would even go along with your sharper definition of scientific merit, when you propose that “…other things being equal, that field has the most scientific merit, which contributes most heavily to and illuminates most brightly its neighboring scientific disciplines”. But I cannot follow your arguments when you apply your criteria to the field of high‐energy physics.

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