The Social Aspects of Science

ONE year ago, at the 1955 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the AAAS Council established a five‐member interim committee to make a preliminary study of the present state of science in the United States and its relation to social forces and issues. The committee, headed by Ward Pigman, professor of biochemistry at the University of Alabama Medical Center, distributed its provisional report to members of the AAAS Council prior to the Association’s 1956 annual meeting, which was held in New York City in December. The committee also called for a full debate on the subject and indicated its belief “that society and science are now so intermeshed and interacting that scientific groups must reevaluate their traditional ‘isolationist’ positions and accept the place in the democratic process demanded by the current importance of science”.

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