SPAN: April 1975

WHAT'S AHEAD FOR THE U.S. IN SPACE? "When men reach beyond this planet, they should leave their differences behind," President Kennedy once said. That's what will happen in July 1975 when U.S. and Soviet astronauts link their Apollo and Soyuz craft together (top painting) to work in space. Future U.S. space projects include the Viking landing on

Mars on July 4, 1976-commemorating 200 years of American Independence-and the space shuttle (above left). All of these projects involve massive ground support from such "deep space network" stations as the one in Madrid, with its sophisticated transmitter (above). U.S. spaceplans areforecast onpages 21-25.

SPAN A LEITER FROM THE PUBLISHER

2 4 Breaking 5 Is the World (J;Economy (.wi IE, ,,~,

As this issue of SPAN went to press, the United States announced the lifting of its nearly 10-year-old embargo on the export of military equipment to India and Pakistan, and India's External Affairs Minister Y.B. Chavan postponed his trip to Washington. The meeting of the Indo-American Joint Commission is not to take place in mid-March as was planned.

Meanwhile, recent weeks witnessed solid work being accomplished by meetings of the parent body's three Subcommissions -on education and culture, science and technology, and economic and commercial relations. The work of the distinguished Indian and American officials, educators, scientists, economists and businessmen who constitute these Subcommissions (story on page 2) points the way to the progress that can be achieved.

Progress is also the theme of another important article in this issue, "Making Development Work for People" (page 45).

The distinguished social economist Barbara Ward reminds us that whenever one feels pessimistic about developing countries' "progress," one should remember that the five per cent GNP growth that was averaged by the developing world in the 1960s isthe highest sustained growth rate ever averaged by modernizing states in the early stages of technological change.

We have several other distingui6hed names in this issueboth as byliners and as subjects of articles. There is a rare interviewwith R.K. Narayan (page 4"0),in whioh he talks about many things and people, including the Ameri~an novelist John Updike. In tutn, Updike reviews Narayan's autobiography My Days (page 38). There is a profile of Noam Chomsky (page 14) who lias revolutionized the whole concept of linguistics; and as a sidelight to this story we have the reactions of two Indian professors to his controversial theories.

Novelist Joyce Carol Oates reviews the book The Lives. of a Cell (page 10) by Dr. Lewis Thomas. This is supplemented by one of the essays from Thomas's book (page 12). Dr. Thomas feels that the need to make "music" may be more than a human universal-it might be a characteristic of all living things.

A word about our Special Section on Space Travel. There's a rundown of U.S. space plans over the next five years on page 21 and on page 26 an interesting sampling of "space art." For those who fear that man will pollute himself into extinction, space scientist Krafft Ehricke has some reassuring answers (page 28). We can put our nuclear power plants on the Moon, he says. We can exploit the mineral resources of the so-called "dead" planets, and preserve our Earth as the garden of the solar system. Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun makes equally cheerful predictions (page 32). Among them: man will set foot on Mars by 2025 A.D.; the first lunar baby will be born around the year 2000; Earth-orbiting satellites will be as common 25 years hence as planes or telephones. And as a matter of routine, space shuttles will cruise the heavens and circle the globe.

For a world in need of some optimism to balance the pessimism of the daily headlines, these eminent scientists proffer a more cheerful picture. Let's hope they're right.

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49 Front cover: An ingenious artist gives visual expression to Dr. Krafft Ehricke's thesis: Although the clock is working against us, we can creat~ an earthly' paradise if we exploit our neighbors in the solar system. For story, see page 28.

Back cover: Flamingos in Bellingrath Gardens near Mobile, Alabama, the northernmost point on the Gulf of Mexico.

The American Gulf Coast is a haven for many species of rare and colorful birds. See "Touring America;' page 49.

Managing Editor: Carmen Kagal. Assistant Managing Editor: S.R. Madhu. Editorial Staff: MohammedReyazuddin, Avinash Pasricha, Nirmal Sharma, Krishan Gabrani, Murari Saha, Rocque' Fernandes. Art Director: Nand Katyal. Art Staff: Gopi Gajwani, B. Roy Choudhury. Kanti Roy, Suhas Nimbalkar. Chief of Production: Awtar S. Marwaha. PhotographicServices: USIS Photo Lab. Publishedby the United States Information Service. 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg. New Delhi-1I0 001, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Government. Printed byArun Mehta at Vakil & Sons Private Ltd., Vakils House, Sprott Road, 18 Ballard Estate, Bombay-4oo038.

Photograpbs: Front cover-Artworks. Inside front cover-NASA. 2-I.D. Beri. 3-Avinash Pasricha. 10 right-Bob Isear. 14-Joyce Dopkeen, the New York Times Magazine. 21-23-NASA. 24-25center-Robert T. McCall, courtesy the Garrett Corporation. 28-lIIustration by Don Punchatz, courtesy Exxon USA. 32.35-NASA~·38 tOp-'-T.S. Satyan. Inside back cover and back cover-Dan Guravich:courtesy Friends.

INDO-AMERICAN RELATIONS

BUILDING A NEW EDIFICE While the Indo-U.S. Joint Commission will not be meeting in Washington as originally scheduled, much solid preparatory work for a future meeting was accomplished by the three Subcommissions, which met earlier this year. They made recommendations for co-operation in the fields of culture, education, science, technology, trade and investment. The story below discusses what the Subcommission did, .in the words of Minister Chavan, to help 'Build up a new edifice of positive, constructive, mature and realistic friendship in all spheres.' objects in terms of illicit trade of Indian ing, long-standing cultural programs be• art antiquities and suggested that the two tween the U. S. and India.

The 17-man Indian delegation was led governments enact legislation and procedures to deal with this problem.) .

by G. Parthasarathi, former Vice-ChanThey further recommended binational cellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University; seminars in fields of common interest to the 17-member American delegation was Indian and U.S. scholars-such as agri- headed by Robert Goheen, former presicultural education, museums, educational dent of Princeton University.

Although the meeting of the Subcomresources and medical pedagogy.

They agreed to recommend considera- mission on Education and Culture was an important milestone in the history of tion of a new government-to-government program of .scholarships-a program that Indo-American cultural relations, it was would not supersede existing educational far from the beginning of the road. India,. exchanges but would build on them. and America have been influencing each The subcommission also reviewed the other culturally ever since Emerson read progress and functioning of many exist- the Upanishads and Indian leaders read Thoreau. Indeed, the very month (Feb($> ruary 1975) in which the subcommission Robert Goheen (far met in New Delhi was one of the busiest left), chairman of u.s. delegation to seasons for Indo-American cultural exchanges. To cite only a few: the Indo-American • The Third Triennale-India, inauguSubcommission rated on February 7 by President Fakhrudon Education and din Ali Ahmed, brought together hunCulture, talks with dreds of works of art from 25 nations, G. Parthasarathi, including the United States. The U.S. leader of Indian was represented by four wood sculptures delegation. The and three graphics by 75-year-old Louise subcommission Nevelson, the doyenne of American~culmet in Delhi last ptors.

Nevelson came to India with her February to discuss exhibit, participated in many of the actifuture academic and vities connected with the Triennale, and cultural exchanges. delivered a lecture on "My Philosophy of Creativity" at New Delhi's Lalit Kala Akademi. After the Triennale, the seven works in her exhibit were sent on a tour

On February 3-5, 1975, the Indo-U.S. Subcommission on Education and· Culture met in New Delhi;s Vigyan Bhavan to discu;;s what the two nations might do together in the fields of culture in general and education in particular. The delegates recommended more exchanges between the two countries in educational techno 1ogy and educational materials; in TV programs and motion pictures; in artistic and cultural exhibitions designed to enhance awareness, understanding and appreciation of each other's culture.

They also recommended'· more exchange of art objects on a loan basis. (They felt there was too much "exchange" of art

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of other Indian cities-Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Ahmedabad.

• Another major figure in the American art world was invited to India in February to be one of the judges of the Triennale: Monroe Wheeler, former director of New York's Museum of Modern Art. One of the most influential arbiters of art in the United States, Wheeler is also one of the men most responsible for introducing to America, many years ago, the films of Satyajit Ray and the music of Ravi Shankar.

• There were also films at'the Triennale, including the world premiere of The Dance of Siva, another Indo-American collaboration.

Sponsored by the U.S. Information Service, produced and directed by Chidananda Dasgupta and B. D. Garga, this color documentary is about the life and work of Ananda Coomaraswamy. [For Dasgupta's article on the making of the film, see "Light on the Art of India," March 1973 SPAN.] • Another big Indo-American cultural event in February was the· visit of playwright Jerome Lawrence and drama criticdirector Harold Clurman, who came to India to conduct a seminar on American drama under the auspices of the National School of Drama.

• While Lawrence and Clurman were in India, two Indian drama troupes were performing in America. "Chhau," the masked dance of Bengal, had its New York opening in February under the auspices of t he Asia Society. And it was also the month when Gopal Sharman and Jalabala Vaidya of Delhi's Akshara Theatre staged the American premiere of their Ramayana at New York's Barbizon Plaza Theater. The New York Times praised the "formidable range of virtuosity in this one-woman show." [Jalabala Vaidya pl~ys all 20 parts in Gopal Sharman's version of the Ramayana; se~ March 1975 SPAN.] • America's academic world was represented in India in February not only

by Robert Goheen (chairman of the American delegation to the subcommission) but by Harold Isaacs, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Henry Dan Piper, professor of English and American literature at Southern Illinois University -to name but two of the many visiting American scholars.

* * * * *

The New Delhi meeting of the Subcommission on Education and Culture concluded the recent series of meetings

of the three Indo-American subcommissions set up last October under the umbrella of the over-all Indo-U.S. Joint Commission. The other two meetings took place in Washington in January.

The Subcommission for Economic and Commercial Relations met in Washington on January 20-21. Head of the Indian delegation was M.G. Kaul, India's Finance Secretary; head of the American delegation was Thomas O. Enders, U.S. Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs. This, too, was a productive session. It gave birth to a "Joint Business Council," in which India and the U.S. will work together to boost trade and investments between the two nations.

Secretary Kaul said the council would yield "benefits to both countries." Secretary Enders called the council "a novel and promising way of developing the economic relationships" of the two countries.

A week after this meeting, the IndoU.S. Subcommission on Science and Technology also convened in Washington, chaired by Dr. B.D. Nag Chaudhuri, Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and Dr. Dixie Lee Ray, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. [See interview with Dr. Ray in the March 1974 SPAN.] Delegates discussed the whole range of Indo-U.S. co-operation in science and technology. They concentrated on certain sectors: agriculture, especially pest control and use of water on arid lands; energy, mainly the use of solar energy in rural areas; health, particularly fertility control and the fight against communicable and infectious diseases. They also discussed what they At right: Louise Nevelson, one of America's most distinguished sculptors, was in New Delhi recently to represent the U.S. at the Third TriennaleIndia. She poses here with one of her works entitled "Night Zag X X," shown at the Triennale.

could do together in electronics, communications and environmental studies.

In sum, these meetings of the three Indo-U.S. subcommissions (one in New' Delhi, two in Washington) have set the stage for a second meeting of their "parent organization," the Joint Indo-U.S. Commission.

The setting up of the Joint Commission last October during U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's visit to India was a significant step in the recent history of Indo-American relations. Speaking on that occasion, Dr. Kissinger made the following remarks: "The signing of the agreement establishing the Joint Commission marks an important stage in the evolution of relations between India and the United States. The principles of interdependence so long espoused by all of India's leaders find their natural expression in this effort to institutionalize our coop~ration .... As far as the United States is concerned, we are prepared to make a majQr effort and to use these commissions as one vehicle for the strengthening of relationships between India and the United States."

And speaking for India on the same occasion, Minister Chavan said: "The establishment of the commission fits in with the larger pattern of emerging interdependence of the world, in which no country can be entirely self-sufficient and where there is no real alternative to peaceful international co-operation .... All in all, the Joint Commission provides a good opportunity for both countries to take the process of their developing relations a stage further and build up a new edifice of positive, constructive, mature and realistic friendship in all spheres."

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Boldlnl the ecololleal balance Dear Sir: I found the two articles "California Puts the Brakes On" and "The Mysterious Language of the Oceans" [July 1974 SPAN] interesting, because ecology has never had so nlUch importance as it has today.

There are many countries like India where the majority of the people still live in villages and have not yet drifted to cities, although the latter trend is becoming more pronounced every day. With thoughtful planning urban sprawl can be checked effectively without jeopardizing economic growth. The ecological balance can be preserved, and the human environment can be improved, at much less cost than would be required by the developed nations.

Being a~~ociated with the project of Chandigarh which was adjudged by an international jury at Paris to have provided desirable human environment at . modest cost, and having 'received an international award for my contribution toward it, I must say that the development of a city must be preplanned and well controlled through legislation, with the future perspective kept in mind.

Chandigarh is a success' only because these aspects had been given¡ utmost consideration. The city is only 25 years . old, but it has established an environment wher'e the relationship between man and nature is balanced. This is so because it is designed to a human scale.

The sudden stoppage of the development of any city is not desirable. It may even be dangerous to the' economic base of the city, as a number of people connected with the city's development are suddenly thrown out of jobs.

Regarding the relation of ecology and the environment¡ to economic development, while economic growth is neces~ sary to provide the resources to tackle the environmental problems, economic growth itself, if left uncontrolled, adds to the problems of pollution and ecological disturbances~ As such, a balanced' view of economic development has to be taken on a universal basis and not on a countrywise basis. The developed nations must

be prepared to control their economic developing nations (such as India) and growth and help the <}.evelopingnations those of the developed ones. Yet like the to fight this problem right from the Sierra Club in the U.S., the Indian Socibeginning while striving for their eco- ety for Environmental Studies at Calcutta nomic development. At the same time the has already started its campaign against developing nations must take serious pollution.

'S.M. CHATTERJEE steps to stabilize their population.

Engineer In our Vedas, the concern over the Calcutta Metropolitan Water and ecological balance and the concept of Sanitation Authority treating the whole universe as one family were expressed emphatically and expressed ages ago. Unless the exploitation of a nation by a nation and of a man by a man is stopped, there can be no universal Dear Sir: The debate raised in "Is peace nor can there be a happy environ- . Economic Growth the Way to a Better ment for the human race. In-this context, Life?" [November 1974 SPAN] is both interesting and timely. But at the outset the assistance by rich countries-whether in the form of consultancy or in the form it ought to be clear that a categorical of funds-must be with the idea of help- answer to the need for a halt to economic ing the developing countries and not with growth is illogical. The need depends on the economic and-even more-on the the idea of exploiting them. psychological status of the country.

M.N.SHARMA If we have now come to realize that Chief Architect & Secretary Department of Architecture too much prosperity invites social probChandigarh Administration lems and evils, it has long been known that acute want breeds its own evils.

There can therefore be no final "Yes" or "No" for the virtues of economic growth. Economic growth is imperative Dear Sir: The two ecology articles in your for the undeveloped and less developed regions of the world, and a self-imposed July 1974 issue are excellent. Nothing has economic limit is equally essential for underlined the common dilemma of all affluent societies. mankind so clearly as the environmental That individual and that nation is wise crisis now unfolding. Signs of stress on which can take off for its spiritual growth the ecosystem are everywhere today. from the lowest possible economic pad .

The process of urbanization is comGreat sages like Thoreau, Tolstoy and mon to every poor country today. It Gandhi have shown how little indeed is has also been common to most rich needed for those who have set their .countries. Urbanization has served as an sights high on intellectual and spiritual index of industrialization and modachievements. If a psychology of "scorn ernization. Today urbanization in the of excess" is built up across the globe, it poor ~ountries results much more from' will be good for the individual, and good uncontrolled population growth and defor the planet. clining opportunities in overpopulated If we have during the centuries burned rural areas. Urban pull has been reinto the subconscious of mankind that . placed by rural push. Increasingly, affluence is the panacea for human ills, urbanization is an index of frustration it should be equally possible to indoc.and the potential explosiveness of urban trinate ourselves with the truth that slums. In certain cases modernization, fewer material needs hold the key to as symbolized by the city, fosters aspirahuman happiness. If renunciation comes tions in excess of real opportunities. In to be socially more respectable than the addition, rapid mechanization' of the possession of riches, mankind will then rural sector has displaced rural labor, have ,attained. maturity on earth. forcing migration to the city at a rate far K.S. RAN GAPPA in excess of urban opportunities.

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IS THEWORLD ECONOMY BREAKING DOWN;J Yes, says the author, tracing the events and forces which have led to the present global economic crisis. He contends, however, that the crisis is soluble if the world has 'the will and the unity to do it.'

The world has been slow to realize that we are living this year in the shadow of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern history.

But now that the man in the street has become aware of what is happening, he, not knowing the why and wherefore, is as full today of what may prove excessive fears as, previously, when the trouble was first coming on, he was lacking in what would have been a reasonable anxiety.

He begins to doubt the future. Is he now awakening from a pleasant dream to face the darkness of facts? Or dropping off into a nightmare which will pass away?

John Maynard Keynes wrote those words in 1930-and the nightmare proved to be all too real. Today, the world economy is again threatened with breakdown and disintegration. Monetary disorder afflicts the entire noncommunist world. Nations coming up against the interlocked threats of trade and payments deficits, inflation, energy shortages and unemployment are growing increasingly nationalistic in their policies. It was beggar-my-neighbor nationalism that brought on the debacle last time, for in the end the nationalism turned demonic and aggressive in Germany and Japan. Such an outcome

The use of the oil weapon by the oil producers, says the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, is 'the greatest immediate threat to world economic and political stability.' seems unthinkable today-as it did in 1931. The time has come to review recent economic history, whose chief lesson seems to be that we are again facing a choice between ec<?nomicchaos and a difficult, unprecedented, peacetime collaboration among major governments.

History does not repeat itself precisely. One of the great differences today from the world of which Keynes was writing in 1930 is the revolution in national economic policy fathered by Keynes himselfthe use of government spending, tax cuts, budget deficits and the pumping of money into an economy to prevent deep depression.

Every government, prodded by powerful political forces, has been using the Keynesian medicine for keeping employment at a high level.

An unwanted consequence has been a quickening of inflation, the worst in a generation.

In the U.S., Chairman Arthur F. Burns of the Federal Reserve Board warned that "if long continued, inflation at- anything like the present rate would threaten the very foundation of our society."

The threat of a crash is worldwide, and has been seriously exacerbated by the enormous deficits being incurred by oil-importing nations as a result of the quadrupling of oil prices after the Arab-Israeli war in 1973. David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, has been warning that the existing financial system may be unable to stand tpe strain of the sudden transfer of tens of billions of dollars a year from oil-importing to oil-exporting nations. The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London regards the use of the oil weapon by the Arabs, Iranians and other members of the international oil cartel as the greatest immediate threat to world economic and political stability. The rich,' industrial countries are threatened, and so are the oil-poor developing nations, such as India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

both for the United States and for the rest of the world. The concept of an interdependent world economy was no mere intellectual abstraction, but the basis for shared prosperity and growth.

The reconstructed world monetary system was founded on the strength of the American economy, on the strength of the dollar and on the deficits in the United States balance of payments. Therein lay a serious contradiction: .A strong dollar and chronic deficits in, the United States balance of payments would in time prove to be incompatible; either the dollar would weaken or the American deficits would have to be ended. There was a further contradiction: If the American deficits ended, the flow of dollars that was providing the monetary reserves for world economic expansion would also cease.

In fact, when the United States decided in the late 1950s that the reconstruction period was oever,it turned out to be extremely hard to end the deficits. One reason was that the United States was reluctant to give up its role as leader of the noncommunist world.

America's persistent payments deficits were not due solely to its military actions and economic aid programs. Of growing importance, as the deficits went on year after year, was the overvaluation of the United States dollar in relation to gold and to other currencies. This hurt American exports and made imports, as well as travel and foreign investment, cheaper for Americans. So the migration of American business overseas went on apace, with corporations using abundant and overvalued dollars to buy up foreign assets, start branches and subsidiaries abroad, hire foreign labor and use other foreign resources to increase their worldwide profits.

F

oreigners, in the midst of the dollar prosperity, were schizoid about the trend. Many, especially those in close partnership with the Americans, welcomed the growth that United States capital, technology and managerial know-how helped bring. But there was increasing concern in Europe about the inflation that the dollar inflow was also helping to breed. And there was growing opposition to the "American challenge" of economic and political dominance-and about the recklessness of American military policy. Vietnam particularly strained the political bonds between the United States and its European allies. It also sealed the doom of the postwar world monetary system that had been built on a strong dollar and fixed exchange ow did the world economy get into this pickle? Can we get out rates between the dollar, gold and all other currencies. For Vietnaw of it? I believe that it will take extraordinary measures by the accelerated the outflow of dollars from the United States and, even United States and other nations, working together-as they failed to more damaging, increased domestic inflation.

President Nixon inherited the inflation-and eventually made it do in the 1920s and '30s until the roof finally fell in.

A way must be found to achieve the kind of international co- worse. After a year of trying to stop it by tight money alone, Nixon operation that made possible the reconstruction of the world economy brought the country a recession. Finding rising unemployment politiwith the 1972 election looming-he after World War II, the most devastating in history. But the United cally intolerable-especially States can no longer call the tune or provide the bulk of resources to switched to a highly expansive fiscal and monetary policy aimed at resolve the current crisis as it did after the Second World War. "It is restoring full employment. For political reasons, he announcedno exaggeration," says Dr. H. Johannes Witteveen, the Dutch econ- few politicians had ever made it so explicit-"I am now a Keynesian."

Under Nixonian management, the U.S. balance-of-payments defiomist who serves as managing director of the International Monetary Fund, "to say that the world presently faces the most difficult combi- cit worsened. Dollars nation of economic policy decisions since the reconstruction period poured out of the â&#x20AC;˘ following World War II." country, and on --lJJm--------@@I!,IP) That brilliant job of resuscitation is now taken for granted, but August 15, 1971, as can anyone who in those days saw the grim shattered cities of Europe part of the "New Ecoand Asia, the disease and famine, the desperate mood and the cor- nomic Policy," Presiruption of the people forget it? In the decades after the war, the dent Nixon slammed world economy experienced the greatest upsurge of growth in all shut the gold window, history. World trade revived, and the wor,ld monetary system was refusing to payout rebuilt as the United States deliberately incurred deficits in its balance any more gold to forof payments to feed dollars and gold out to the world. In effect, the eign claimants in exUnited States was acting like the I;>igwinner in a poker game who change for their surknows that unless the poker chips are redistributed, the game is over. plus dollars. NeverThose deliberately incurred American deficits made the best of sense, theless, overvalued

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dollars continued to gush out as expectations of what would once have been unthinkable-a dollar devaluation-grew.

Finally, on December 18, 1971, at an extraordinary monetary conference at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, held amid the trappings and relics of the greatest achievements of American technology, the dollar was devalued by eight per cent.

The object of the Smithsonian conference, from the American standpoint, was to devalue the dollar enough to produce equilibrium, or, if possible, a big surplus, in the American balance of payments.

This would, it was hoped, restore American economic power and prestige; it would also save the "dollar _standard," with the United States as kingpin of the world monetary system. For this reason the Nixon Administration was, somewhat paradoxically, eager not to "devalue the dollar" officially, but to make other governments upvalue their currencies. ' Logically, there would seem to be no difference between devaluing one currency and upvaluing others in relation to it-and indeed there is virtually none. However, there was one important difference. The dollar had been regarded as the fixed star of the world monetary system, the star around which all the other national currencies revolved. For the dollar to change its own value-to be devalued in relation to other currencies and to gold-would symbolize a radical change in the conception of the world monetary order, like the Copernican revolution in which the earth was no longer seen as the unchanging center of the universe.

After the Smithsonian devaluation of the dollar, no matter how much the Americans might insist that the dollar was still the fixed center of the world monetary system, the skeptics would go on saying, like Galileo, "But it does move." And in fact, after the Smithsonian agreement, United States officials themselves gradually accepted the new concept of a movable dollar.

The Smithsonian agreement-the "greatest monetary agreement in the history of the world," President Nixon called it-was supposed to be a one-shot realignment of exchange rates that would preserve the fixed-exchange-rate system created af Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. However, the Smithsonian agreement failed to hit on a rate structure that would restore monetary stability. With inflation raging at differential rates, that was doubtless impossible. The Nixon Administration, in any case, made virtually no effort to defend the Smithsonian exchange rates. It practiced the doctrine of "benign neglect," smug in the belief that foreigners had no alternative to taking in more dollars unless they would be willing to further increase the value of their own currencies, which the United States still wanted them to do.

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he impact of devaluation on inflation caught Washington and most economists by surprise. American economists tend'to minimize the importance of foreign trade to the United States, since exports or imports constitute less than five per cent of this country's gross national product. But the dollar devaluation, combined with expansive fiscal and monetary policy, intensified inflationary pressures which price controls could barely suppress. Devaluation spurred domestic inflation in the United States, certainly in the short run, by raising the dollar prices, in the U.S., of internationally traded goods, not only those of imports entering the United States but also, and more important, those of all exportable American goods as well. Many American products suddenly looked like a terrific bargain to foreigners, and they rushed to buy-beef in Chicago, oil in Baton Rouge and paintings at Sotheby Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York. The impact on prices was dramatic. As Randall Hinshaw of Claremont Graduate School has found, the efl;ectof devaluation was immediate on primary products, such as food and raw materials, but more gradual on the prices of manufactured goods such as automobiles

and tractors, especially under then existing price controls. However, as the prices of such basic internationally traded raw-material "inputs" as iron and steel, copper, aluminum, zinc, lead and plastics have risen, so have the prices of autos, tractors and other manufactured goods. And when price controls were lifted, the prices of industrial goods soared.

I

ronically,the devaluation of the dollar initially had a perverse effect on the United States balance of trade and payments. Economists had expected some lag, but it lasted longer than it was supposed to.

Indeed, the dollar outflow quickened. The reason was that the devaluation increased the dollar price of imports more than it reduced the volume of imports, especially as the American economy was expanding more rapidly and sucking in more imports. Simultaneously, devaluation cut the dollar price of American exports, causing foreign demand for cheaper American goods to boom; but the United States imposed export controls on soybeans and other agricultural goods, restricting the rise of its earnings abroad. Even more important, booming demand at home restricted the growth of United States exports.

Hence the American trade position worsened in 1972, and dollars continued to flow overseas to cover the payments gap. The basic United States blunder was to think it could run a devaluation of the dollar without first slowing the economy. It did just the reversecoupling devaluation with strong fiscal and monetary stimulus.

The fixed-exchange-rate system could not survive the continuing dollar outflow. In early 1973, there was a second dollar devaluation, amounting to 10 per cent, following a dramatic around-the-world flight by Under Secretary of the Treasury Paul Volcker. But instead of calming the foreign-exchange markets, it roiled them further. And in late February and early March, dollars began to flood into West Germany because the mark looked like the safest port in a storm.

The German central bank took in over $3,000 million a day, paying out marks to all comers in a vain attempt to keep the mark's exchange rate from rising. After dishing out more than $10,000 million worth of marks, German monetary officials finally grew frightened of inflation and threw in the sponge. They stopped defending the fixed exchange rate between the dollar and the mark; so the mark floated upward, and the dollar floated downward.

The Bretton Woods fixed-rate system was dead; the whole world monetary system was afloat. But inflation was anything but dead. " The loss of respect for the dollar, the key currency of the world monetary system, brought on a flight from all currencies into anything precious and scarce that would hold its value in a time of monetary crisis-gold, silver, platinum and many other commodities.

Overnight it seemed as though the Club of Rome's long-range forecasts of the exhaustion of world resources were coming true in a rush, with soaring prices the fever gauge of commodity shortCl:ges.

Accidents of nature fed the commodity inflation. One of the weirdest was the disappearance of anchovies off the coast of Peru.

Why this happened is still unclear. One theory is that the cause was the 1972-73 invasion of a warm-water current called El Nino, which upset the ecology of the cold-water Humboldt Current, drastically reducing the supply of plankton and other nutrients in which the anchovies feed. Most marine biologists doubt this, pointing out that El Nino comes roughly every seven years-it had last arrived in 1957 and 1962-but had not earlier seriously damaged the anchovy stock.

Did an influx of predators eat the spawn? Were the young fish blown into hostile waters? Nobody really knows. Whatever the eXiplanation, as Morgan Guaranty Bank economists correctly stressed, Peru's anchovy catch fell from more than 10 million tons to 2 million tons in 1973, wiping out a critical part of the world's fishmeal supply, which is used to feed livestock.

Bad growing weather for cereals, the failure of much of the Soviet

'The world presently faces the most difficult combination of economic policy decisions since the reconstruction period following World War II.' crop, the massive Soviet-American wheat deal-a key element in detente-exacerbated the commodity inflation. But the over-all inflationary trend was no fluke. All nations were in a simultaneous boom, and world demand was outrunning supply. The perception of rising prices was transmogrified, as inevitably happens when an inflation lasts long enough, into a public perception that paper money is losing value and is not worth holding. Speculators rushed from currencies into commodities. By October of 1973, world commodity prices had more than doubled from the start of the year. And then, with the outbreak of the Yom Kippur war in the Middle East, the Arabs launched their oil weapon against the West.

W

orld commodity inflation had given the oil producers both the motivation and the opportunity to boost their prices sky high.

The rising cost of imports to the Arabs, Iranians and other oil-producing states, the rapidly growing demand for oil, thanks to the simultaneous boom in all the major industrial countries, the disappearance of American buffer stocks of oil-all these factors gave the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Iran, Libya, Iraq, Algeria, Qatar, Indonesia, Venezuela, Nigeria and Ecuador, the golden opportunity for a financial killing.

The Arab oil embargo, designed to induce the Western powers to force Israel to yield to Arab demands, cut the world oil supply at the critical moment, threw the Western allies into disarray in a mad scramble for oil and paved the way for the fourfold increase in oil prices. The price in the Persian Gulf was jacked up from about $2.10 a barrel to $8 a barrel. That meant the greatest single financial coup in history-a $70,000-million haul by the oil producers in a single year. In 1975, their extra take will amount to $90,000 million. And, if oil prices hold, they will be taking in over $100,000 million a year -year after year. The World Bank estimates that by 1980 the oilproducing countries' holdings of liquid surplus capital will total $400,000 million. This would mean that just five years from now they will hold at least 70 per cent of the world's total monetary reserves.

The fantastic transfer of money to the oil-producing states has created an unprecedented shock for the world economy. That shock is, paradoxically, both inflationary and contractionary. The huge increase in oil prices and payments worsens inflation in the United States, Japan and Western Europe by increasing both living costs and costs of production. It puts powerful pressure, both direct and indirect, upon the industrial and the developing countries to increase their export prices, in order to cover their oil deficits. To be sure, high prices are bringing out more oil and curbing demand. There is now, therefore, some downward pressure on prices. The crucial issue is whether the international oil cartel will hang together, even if this means cutting production to hold up prices.

At the same time, the enormous transfer of funds to the oil producers can choke off consumption and productive investment in the West. The build-up of Arab holdings, and the huge deficits that are their counterpart, could cause a breakdown in the world monetary system.

Professor Richard Cooper of Yale University says it is as though the Shah of Iran, the King of Saudi Arabia and the others had levied an annual tax amounting to $70,000 million a year upon the rest of the world. Such a tax increase, as modern economic theory teaches

us, will have a contractionary effect on national economies unless the money collected is put back into the economies from which it is collected in the form of expenditures on consumer goods or capital goods. If the major share of "oil taxes" collected by foreign governments is not respent or reinvested in production, it will choke off output and income in the oil-importing countries. Some nations-those that are the best investment bets-will receive major shares of the oil money back; that is likely to be true of the United States and West Germany. Others, less creditworthy, will suffer huge deficits; that is already true ofItaly, and it could be true of many others. The nations of the West could fall into economic warfare, each fighting to reduce its own deficit, and blocking imports or depreciating its currency to do so. Competitive deflation could bring on a world depression. The most agonizing peril faces the poor, developing countries, whose markets would contract drastically.

For those nations caught with the worst deficits, there will be severe risks of defaults on their foreign obligations. If the Italiansand a few other governments with heavy balance-of-payments deficits -should default on their debts, some of the biggest and seemingly strongest private financial institutions all over the world would lose hundreds of millions of dollars, and the entire world financial system would be in jeopardy.

O

nce again, as in 1929-31, the world is facing the danger of a liquidity crisis, which, simply put, is the inability of financial institutions or governments to meet their current debts. Such a crisis, if it hit two or more countries simultaneously, could race like greased lightning through the entire world financial system. That was what happened in 1931 when the Austrian Creditanstalt failed. It was the breakdown of the world monetary system in 1931 that turned the sharp 1929-30 recession into the worst depression in history. Not even Keynes expected the nightmare that began in 1931. It is this kind of international catastrophe we must prevent now.

But how? There are many ways to do it, but the above account of how we got where we are today suggests the main elements essential to a solution: First, the United States, Western Europe and Japan must recognize that they are all in the same boat, and must either work together or they will sink together.

The United States cannot dictate to the others; it does not ha~e the power to do so, and it would only defeat its own purposes if it tried. What is needed now is genuinely shared leadership and the forging of a spirit comparable to that achieved in wartime-and to the reconstruction of the world after the last war.

Second, this co-operation must immediately take theform of pre vent-

ing any single country, or its major financial institutions, fr~m going under.

One of the reasons we in the United States are not already suffering from a major domestic financial panic is that our central bank, the Federal Reserve System, has been prepared to rescue any major financial institution that gets into serious trouble, as it did last year in the case of the Franklin National Bank of New York. Internationally;we do not yet have a "lender oflast resort." Some national central banks have met in Basel, Switzerland, to work out plans for rescuing endangered financial institutions, though not all central banks have joined the effort and it is not yet clear how far those participating are ready to go. The nations of the Western world and Japan should either create an international lending agency of last resort, or transform the International Monetary Fund into a true world central bank that can rescue major financial institutions and nations themselves from financial collapse.

so much from country to country. There is no monetary formula or technical solution that will provide governments with the political courage and the economic skills to reduce the excessive demands that propel domestic inflation. Governments must resist the multitude of special-interest pressures that distort or waste resources.

Under the sway of Keynesian economic theory, inflation has been regarded by most contemporary economists as a "technical" prob1em resulting from a gap between the excess demand for all goods and services and what the economy is capable of producing at e~isting prices. The basic remedy has been to close that inflationary gap by reducing total demand, whether by tax increases, cuts in government spending or by making less money and credit available to the private economy.

I

thas become clear that the problem of stopping inflation is not technical but political in the large, systemic sense. Inflation is a conThird, the world monetary system must be restored to equilibrium. sequence of the way massive, organizational, pressure-group econThe most important single step toward that end would be a signif- omies operate. Other groups that have won special benefits and icant reduction in the price of oil, which would reduce the imbalance protection from government-whether in the form of subsidies, huge of payments between the oil-importing and oil-exporting countries. appropriations, tax breaks, tariffs, import quotas or other rules limitthe oil industry, the The oil-importing countries should develop a broad strategy to bring ing foreign or domestic competition-include down the price, a strategy that should include: an effective conserva- maritime industry, civil aviation, the highway-building industry and tion program to reduce the demand for oil; an accelerated program its supporters, dairy producers, wheat farmers, cattlemen, steel proto develop other energy technologies; a warning that, if necessary, ducers and textile producers. Labor unions fight for a growing share the United States and its allies are prepared to withhold trade and the of the national pie partly by backing the demands for special favors managerial and technological skills the oil-exporting countries want and protection of the industries that employ them and partly by for their own economic development; and a refusal by the U.S. and waging side-contests with managements for a bigger slice of the t~ke. its allies to provide arms if the oil-producing states persist in threatenAn effective program against inflation must be one that faces up to the necessity of curbing the power of the special interests and removing Western economic stability.

But if the oil;producing countries are willing to work with the ing their corrupting influence on government. The old-style, laissezWest for world stability and their own development, the United States faire capitalism is dead. Yet the mixed economy-that is, the mixture and its partners should ,extend the hand of friendship to them. It of government and private interests that has replaced it-needs better should facilitate expansion of their trade and foreign investment, the methods of harmonizing competing group pressures in a noninfla"recycling" of oil dollars. tionary way and of guiding the economy to serve broad social needs Fourth, the Western nations must avoid like.the plague the beggarsuch as protection of the environment, development of crucially my-neighbor policies that helped destroy world trade in the '30s. needed energy, and provision of medical care, education and other Such policies broke the world into hostile trading blocs, includ- vital services. ing the nations that joined in Nazi Germany's barter and riggedSpecifically, the U.S. and other capitalist democracies need an inexchange rate deals and Japan's Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The comes policy, a means of regulating the growing income claims qf Western nations must reinforce their liberal trading policies, banning contending groups, together with their access to money and credit both import and export controls. They must hold their markets open through the banking system. In periods of monetary tightness and to one another and seek particularly to create markets for the surplus very high interest such as the present, the inequities of only general and distress goods of nations that get into severe balance-of-payments controls on money and credit become obvious, as the most powerful financial groups drain funds away from the least powerful. trouble.

The nations should also forswear resorting to competitive devaluaSimilarly, America and many others need more effective and tions of their currencies aimed at gaining ¡a trading advantage over democratic ways of planning their long-run social and economic deone another. They must co-ordinate their fiscal and monetary' policies velopment. Increasing the supply of resources, human and material, to avoid competitive deflations that could bring on world depression. and in the proportions needed, is essential to curbing inflation in a The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development way that will not require periodic bouts of recession, depression and (OECD) provides a forum for the joint review of national policies; high unemployment. this process should be strengthened to ensure that world employment In an increasingly integrated world economy, such programs need and trade are mutually sustained. to be international and not merely national in scope. Yet the time While the world monetary system remains chaotic, it would be for supranational government is not yet. The fundamental decisions madness to try to repeg exchanges rates; floating rates have reduced needed to get the world through the current economic crisis, which the massive money flows from one currency to another that propcould become a world political crisis as well, still must be taken at agated world inflation. In time, the reduction of those money flows the national level. Is such an effort to restore world economic order should help to bring world inflation under control and enable ex- politically feasible and realistic? It had better be. We know what we change rates to stabilize. But the nations must work toward stability; must do; the issue now is whether we have the will and the unity a "great leap forward"-or backward-could be disastrous. ~~a D Fifth, nations must resolve to check their domestic inflations, controlling the excess claims of special-interest groups that are its root cause.

Inflation, while communicated internationally, originates basically from domestic sources. This is one reason why rates of inflation vary

About the Author: Leonard Silk is a well-known economist and a member of the editorial board of the New York Times. He has written many books which include Forecasting Business Trends and Contemporary Economics.

A REVIEW OF

~THELIVES OF A CELL'

THE SCIENTIST AS POET

Discussing an amaz.ing new book by Dr. Lewis Thomas (above), Novelist Joyce Carol Oates believes that 'The Lives of/a Cell' reveals how more and more scientists are taking on 'the language of poetry to communicate human truths too mysterious for old-fashioned common sense.'

For the past several years a series of remarkable essays has been appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, that enthralling and somewhat forbidding publication-Dr. Lewis Thomas's "Notes of a Biology Watcher." Readers who have been photostating these essays and teachers who (like me) have been passing them out in classes will be delighted to see them finally collected in one small volume-The Lives of a Cell. The rest of the readers, to whom the "Notes" are new, may have an extraordinarily pleasant surprise in store.

How to praise Dr. Thomas most accurately? One wonders. A reviewer who concentrates upon Dr. Thomas's effortless, beautifully-toned style, even to the point of claiming that many of the 29 essays in this book are masterpieces of the "art of the essay," would direct attention away from the sheer amount of scientific information these slender essays contain.

A reviewer who deals with the book as

"science" would be forced, by Dr. Thomas's marvelous use of paradox, to admit that the book might not yield its wisdom at a single reading. But since it is Dr. Thomas's underlying thesis that divisions are really illusory and that "our most powerful story, equivalent in its way to a universal myth, is evolution," one might as well rIse to the higher speculation that The Lives of a Cell anticipates the kind of writing that will appear more and more frequently, as scientists take on the language of poetry in order to communicate human truths too mysterious for oldfashioned common sense.

If Western science has lost its ability to shape the consciousnesses of younger people, it can only be a tragic loss. For men like Lewis Thomas-as well as Gregory Bateson, Buckminster Fuller, Robert Ornstein and others-are as valuable to our humanistic culture as our most prized poets or artists, precisely because

they are speaking for new scientific truths."

These men are scientists who have absorbed innumerable facts from innumerable disciplines, and given us reflective, speculative works in which information is transcended and something approaching a vision of unity is attempted.

"We are told," Dr. Thomas begins mildly, "that the trouble with Modern Man is that he has been trying to detach himself from nature." But the revolution in contemporary biology provides us with the knowledge, at times unpleasant, that such a detachment is totally illusory: Man is not only completely embedded in nature, he is not definable except in terms of his environment. The earth's life, far from being fragile, is the toughest membrane imaginable; we are its delicate part, "transient and vulnerable as cilia." Man has only invented in his philosophical fantasies an existence superior to that of "brute nature." But aren't we somehow

teria or knowable microscopic creatures the Reader's Digest might one day explain in understandable prose. Not so. Dr. Thomas, on the subject of the symbiotic relations found everywhere in nature, says: "It is a mystery."

The fascination with the mysterious accounts for science as well as art, and the two are really joined, a co-operative human adventure, though articulated in vastly different vocabularies.

The secret of The Lives of a Cell is one man's hope to explain, however inadequately, the miracle of music-at least to his own satisfaction. Literary and humanistic preoccupations are shared by science, but since the scientific spirit is rather unsentimental with regard to the myth of the individual, its pronouncements are likely to sound, at first, rather arcane: "If language is at the core of our social existence, holding us together, housing us in meaning, it may also be safe to say that art and music are functions of the same universal, genetically determined mechanism. . . . If we are social creatures because of this, and therefore like ants, I for one (or should I say we for one?) do not mind."

What people do in. a transient waymost social and political activities-is not considered social behavior in the strict biological sense of the term. What is genetically determined is a constant, and in our species "it begins to look ... as if the gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest oflife .... We engage in it communally, compulsively, and automatically. We cannot be human without it; if we were to be separated from it our minds would die, as surely as bees from the hive." Music is a higher form of language; we evolve from words into music.

And what is marvelous about the entire proces& is its absolute naturalness. Dr. Thomas would dismiss as absurd most of our gloomy romantic concepts of the isolation of the artist, the unnatural fact of man's language. In my guise as a professor of English, I teach theories like Dr. About the Author: Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas's not because they sound revolu37, is one of tionary, but because they are new, novel America's foremost and seemingly objective explications of literary figures. what has always been known, though exShe has published pressed in different terms. Blake's "Energy five novels and is sheer delight" might be the epigraph for several collections this book. A fascinating essay on mythical of short stories, animals-"like engrams, built into our essays and poems. genes"-sounds like a discourse, in simpler Her novel Them language, by Jung on the symbolic archewon the National typal meaning of dream-animals.

Another Book Awartj in '70.

special? Dr. Thomas: "We carry store~

of DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid] in our nuclei that may have come in, at one time or another, from the fusion of ancestral cÂŤlls and the link of ancestral organisms in symbiosis. Our genomes are catalogues of instructions from all kinds of sources in nature, filed for all kinds of contingencies. As for me, I am grateful for differentiation and speciation, but I cannot feel as separate an entity as I did a few years ago, before I was told these things, nor, I should think, can anyone else."

Undogmatic, graceful, gently persuasive, these essays insist upon the interrelatedness of all life. But what has been common religious knowledge in the East from ancient times always sounds very nearly revolutionary in the West. All truth carries with it political and moral implications; science cannot be divorced from the rest of our civilization, any more than a~ individual scientist can be divorced from his participation in the world as a human being. Dr. Thomas's underlying thesis is certainly a positive and optimistic one-is not all scientific truth, at bottom, optimistic? But he is well aware of the immediate difficulties we are facing, and are going to face, since we carry with us, rather helplessly..â&#x20AC;˘, 19th-century assumptions about the relative independence and isolation of man in nature, which our new, intellectual disciplines, like ecology, can hardly overturn in a single generation.

Our literary and humanistic attitudes were formed in the 19th century. The existentialist would read the essays in this book with a growing sense of his own intellectual inferiority, wanting to cry at each seemingly irrefutable discovery: But am I not somehow special? And, yes, the individual is very special; there is nothing like him anywhere in the universe. 'But the individual exists in a complex field of energy. His identity is shared by innumerable forms of life, some of which he carries inside him, wrongly imagining that they are something like germs or friendly bac-

essay, "The Long Habit" (title taken from Thomas Browne's "The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying") might have been preceded by Whitman's hymn to death, "Out of the Cradle .... " One of the most beautiful essays, "The Music of this Sphere," is a profoundly religious piece, almost a revelation, far too complex for explanation here, but curiously similar to what the mystics have been trying to tell us for centuries about the nature of the universe.

Dr. Thomas is president of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Center for Cancer Research, and in the past he has headed pediatrics research laboratories and departments of pathology, as well as serving as dean of the Yale Medical School. All along, evidently, he has been trying to imagine a holistic model, an explanation; a way at least of approaching the mystery that lies at the core of all life, whether we call it friendly or pathological. In Dr. Thomas's visionary world, the earth is a single cell and the sky is a moist, gleaming membrane ("for sheer size and perfection of function, it is far and away the grandest product of collaboration in all of nature") and man, "natural man," might do well to begin to see himself as a kind of tissue specialized for receiving information, possibly even functioning "as a nervous system" for the earth. Our species is an event, a situation. It might turn out, he speculates half-whimsically, half-seriously, that we are approaching a "special phase in the morphogenesis of the earth when it is necessary to have something like us, for a time anyway, to fetch and carry energy, look after new symbiotic arrangements, store up information for some future season ... maybe even carry seeds around the solar system."

Since the grand theme is evolution, and not our peculiar role in it, man has become in a painful, perhaps unwished-for way, nature itself.

D

'The Music of this Sphere,' an essay from 'The Lives of a Cell,' appears on the following pages.

AN ESSAY FROM

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It is one of our problems that as we become crowded together, the sounds we make to each other, in our increasingly complex communication systems, become more random-sounding, accidental or incidental, and we have trouble selecting meaningful signals out of the noise. One reason is that we do not seem able to restrict our communication to information-bearing, relevant signals. Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk. We are only saved by music from being overwhelmed by nonsense.

It is a marginal comfort to know that the relatively new science of bioacoustics must deaL with similar problems in the sounds made by other animals to each other. No matter what sound-making device is placed at their disposal, creatures in general do a great deal of gabbling, and it requires long patience and observation to edit out the parts lacking syntax and sense. Light social conversation, designed to keep the party going, prevails. Nature abhors a long silence.

Somewhere, underlying all the other signals, is a continual music. Termites make percussive sounds to each other by beating their heads against the floor in the dark, resonating corridors of their nests. The sound has been described as resembling, to the human ear, sand falling on paper, but spectrographic analysis of sound records has recently revealed a high degree of organization in the drumming; the beats occur in regular, rhythmic phrases, differing in duration, like notes for a tympani section.

From time to time, c~rtain termites make a convulsive movement of their mandibles to produce a loud, high-

pitched clicking sound, audible 10 meters off. So much effort goes into this one note that it must have urgent meaning, at least to the sender. He cannot make it without such a wrench that he is flung one or two centimeters into the air by the recoil.

There is obvious hazard in trying to assign a particular meaning to this special kind of sound, and problems like this exist throughout the field of bioacoustics. One can imagine a woolly-minded Visitor from Outer Space, interested in human beings, discerning on his spectrograph the click of that golf ball on the surface of the Moon, and trying to account for it as a call of warning (unlikely), a signal of mating (out of the question), or an announcement of territory (could be).

Bats are obliged to make sounds almost ceaselessly, to sense, by sonar, all the objects in their surroundings. They can spot with accuracy, on the wing, small insects, and they will home onto things they like with infallibility and speed.

With such a system for the equivalent of glancing around, they must live in a world of ultrasonic bat-sound, most of it with an industrial, machinery sound. Still, they communicate with each other as well, by clicks and high-pitched greetings. Moreover, they have been hootd to produce, while hanging at rest upside down in the depths of woods, strange, solitary, and lovely bell-like notes.

Almost anything that an animal can employ to make a sound is put to use. Drumming, created by beating the feet, is used by prairie hens, rabbits, and mice; the head is banged by woodpeckers and certain other birds; the males of death-

watch beetles make a rapid ticking sound by percussion of a protuberance on the abdomen against the ground; a faint but audible ticking is made by the tiny beetle Lepinotus inquilinus, which is less than two millimeters in length. Fish make sounds by clicking their teeth, blowing air, and drumming with special muscles against tuned inflated air bladders. Solid structures are set to vibrating by toothed bows in crustaceans and insects. The proboscis of the death'shead hawk moth is used as a kind of reed instrument, blown through to make high-pitched, reedy notes.

Gorillas beat their chests fQr certain kinds of discourse.

Animals with loose skeletons rattle them, or, like rattlesnakes, get sounds from externally placed structures. Turtles, alligators, crocodiles, and even snakes make various more or less vocal sounds. Leeches have been heard to tap rhythmically on leaves, engaging the attention of other leeches, which tap back, in synchrony. Even earthworms make sounds, faint staccato notes in regular clusters. Toadssing to each other, and their friends sing back in antiphony.

Birdsong has been so much analyzed for its content of business communication that there seems little time left for music, but it is there. Behind the glossaries of warning calls, alarms, mating messages, pronouncements of territory, calls for recruitment, and demands for dispersal, there is redundant, elegant sound that is unaccountable as part of the working day. The thrush in my backyard sings down his nose in meditative, liquid runs of melody, over and over again, and I have the strongest impression that he does this for his own pleasure. S~me of the time he seems to be practicing, like a virtuoso in his apartment. He starts a run, reaches a midpoint in the second bar where there should be a set of complex harmonics, stops, and goes back to begin over, dissatisfied. Sometimes he changes his notation so conspicuously that he seeins to be improvising sets of variations. It is a meditative, question1ng kind of music, and I cannot believe that he is simply saying, "thrush here."

The robin sings flexible songs, containing a variety of motifs that he rearranges to his liking; the notes in each motif constitute the syntax, and the possibilities for variation produce a considerable repertoire. The meadow lark, with 300 notes to work with, arranges these in phrases of three to six notes and elaborates 50 types of song. The nightingale has 24 basic songs, but gains wild variety by varying the internal arrangement of phrases and the length of pauses.

The chaffinch listens to other chaffinches, and incorporates into his memory snatches of their songs: The need to make music, and to listen to it, is uriiversally expressed by human beings. I cannot imagine, even in our most primitive times, the emergence of talented painters to make cave paintings without there having been, near at hand, equally creative people making song. It is, like speech, a dominant aspect of human biology.

The individual parts played by other instrumentalistscrickets or earthworms, for instance-may not have the sound of music by themselves, but we hear them out of context. If we could listen to them all at once, fully orchestrated, in their immense ensemble, we might become aware of the counterpoint, the balance of tones and timbres and harmonics, the sonorities. The recorded songs of the hump. back whale, filled with tensions and resolutions, ambiguities and allusions, incomplete, can be listened to as a part of music, like an isolated section of an orchestra. If we had better hearing, and could discern the descants of sea birds,

the rhythmic tympani of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonics of midges hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet.

There are, of course, other ways to account for the songs of whales. They might be simple, down-to-earth statements about navigation, or sources of krill, or limits of territory. But the proof is not in, and until it is shown that these long, convoluted, insistent melodies, repeated by different singers with ornamentations of their own, are the means of sending through, several hundred miles qf undersea such ordinary information as "whale here," I shall believe otherwise. Now and again, in the intervals between songs, the whales have been seen to breach, leaping clear out of the sea and landing on their backs, awash in the turbulence of their beating flippers. Perhaps they are pleased by the way the piece went, or perhaps it is celebration at hearing one's own song returning after circumnavigation; whatever, it has the look of jubilation.

I suppose that my extraterrestrial visitor might puzzle over my records in much the same way, on first listening.

The 14th Quartet might, for him, be a communication announcing, "Beethoven here," answered, after passage through an undersea of time and submerged currents of human thought, by another long signal a century later, "Bartok here."

If, as I believe, the urge to make a kind of music is as much a characteristic of biology as our other fundamental functions, there ought to be an explanation for it. Having none at hand,¡ I am free to make one up. The rhythmic' sounds might be the recapitulation of something else-an earliest memory, a score for the transformation of inanimate, random matter in chaos into the improbable, ordered dance of living forms. Morowitz has presented the case, in thermodynamic terms, for the hypothesis that a steady flow of energy from the inexhaustible source of the sun to the unfillable sink of outer space, by way of the earth, is mathematically destined to cause the organization of matter into an increasingly ordered state. The resulting balancing act involves a ceaseless clustering of bonded atoms into molecules of higher and higher complexity, and the emergence of cycles for the storage and release of energy. In a nonequilibrium steady state, which is postulated, the solar energy would not just flow to the earth and radiate away; it is thermodynamically inevitable that it must rearrange matter into symmetry, away from probability, against entropy, lifting it, so to speak, into a constantly changing condition of rearrangement and molecular ornamentation.

In such a system, the outcome is a chancy kind of order, always on the verge of descending into chaos, held taut against probability by the unremitting, constant surge of energy from the sun.

If there were to be sounds to represent this process, they would have the arrangement of the Brandenburg Concertos for my ear, but I am open to wonder whether the same events are recalled by the rhythms of insects, the long, pulsing runs of birdsong, the descants of whales, the modulated vibrations of a million locusts in migration, the tympani of gorilla breasts, termite heads, drumfish bladders.

A "grand canonical ensemble" is, oddly enough, the proper term for a quantitative model system in thermodynamics, borrowed from music by way of mathematics. Borrowed back again, provided with notation, it would do for what I have in mind.

0

THE CHOMSKYAN What Freud is to psychology and Keynes to economics, Chomsky is to linguistics. His 'transformational grammar' has been acclaimed as a major achievement of the century.

Though the first annual Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at Cambridge University in England was obviously meant to be a serious affair, the starkly modernistic lecture hall had a surprising carnival air. Students had started drifting in an hour early, and the hall was now so crowded that one could barely distinguish the seats from the body-fill~d aisles. The hubbub in the audience abruptly quieted, however, as the evening's speaker threaded his way to the platform. He was an American, certainly middle-aged, yet with a young though conservative look, like ajunior manager in the loan department of a midwestern bank.

The speaker, Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began, fittingly, by repeating a question posed by the great Russell two decades ago: to "How comes it that human beings, whose contacts with the world are brief and personal and limited, are nevertheless able to know as much as they do know?"

The question, though simple enough, is one that has puzzled man since he first began to think about himself and his world. It is one of the central questions of knowledge.

Chomsky was not so bold as to answer. But he did respond to other fundamental questions: What is language, how do we acquire it, how do we use it? And then he suggested that his responses to such questions-the theories that in their entirety have brought about what is known as the Chomskyan Revolution-might provide the map for the mysterious terrain of human intelligence.

Left: Noam Chomsky in his office at M.I.T. The balloons show, in the two notational styles of modern linguistics. how a simple sentence-"A wise man is honest "-is formed under the laws of "transformational grammar."

The process is described on page 18.

17'; -

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REVOLUTION

To the general public, Chomsky, still in his 40s, is best known as an outspoken critic of various policies of the U.S. Govern11}ent.

But it is as a scholar of linguistics that he has come to the center of the long debate over intelligence. His formulation of "transformational grammar" has been acclaimed as one of the major achievements of the century.

Where others heard only a Babel of fragments, he found a linguistic order. His work has been compared to the unraveling of the genetic code of the DNA molecule. Even one of his critics has suggested that it rivals that of Freud and Keynes in scope and coherence.

Some time ago, The Sunday Times of London pronounced him one of the thousand "makers" of the 20th century.

In the small academic discipline of linguistics-the scientific study of languagescholars first began to talk about a Chomskyan Revolution some 15 years ago. The implications of that revolution now reach into philosophy and psychology-and beyond. The very premises of his work have made him one of the most devastating critics of the again-fashionable behaviorism of psychologist B.F. Skinner [see August 1974 SPAN]. Chomsky has also succeeded in reopening an old debate about the relationship between thought and experience, and has initiated major new debates as well. The Chomskyan Revolution, simple and complex at the same time, has had an impact on everything-from the way children are taught foreign languages to what it means when we say that we are human.

Man, it will be agreed, is uniquely the language animal. Though a chimpanzee may be very intelligent, he will never learn to express verbally his feelings to you on the subject of bananas, no matter how many bananas you feed him. No, language is our human possession, the foundation and precondition for society and civilization.

This brings us back to those questions: What is language, how do we acquire it, and how do we use it? In responding, Chomsky has come down on what had been assumed to be the losing side of a long debate.

For three centuries, the conventional explanation for language-indeed for all human knowledge-has been that put forward by the empiricists. Knowledge, they have said, comes from experience. The position was

articulated in the 17th and 18th centuries by such philosophers as John Locke, who described the mind as an "empty cabinet," and

by David Hume, who argued forcefully that "all the laws of nature and all the operations of bodies without exception are known only by experience." By experience, he meant that everything we know comes through our senses-that is, primarily, from what we hear and touch and see.

Today, many philosophers, psychologists and natural scientists accept the empiricist premise with no more doubt than a fundamentalist Christian would have for The Word as revealed in the Bible. They may use different words to describe the process by which we acquire knowledge-conditioning, habit, "constant conjunction," cause and effect-but all are derived from empiricism.

An empiricist would say that a child learns language as a habit. Words are repeated by his parents, and repeated again, and eventually the child begins to imitate. His parents smile when he correctly imitates, but frown and repeat the phrase when he makes a mistake. Thus, say the empiricists, the child begins to speak.

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homsky rejects this view with such vehemence that he once declared: "The empiricist view is so deep-seated in our way of looking at the human mind that it almost has the character of a superstition." He allies himself with the rival theory of knowledge, that of "rationalists" like Descartes, who argued in the 17th century that our perception and understanding of the world rests upon a number of "innate ideas" -such as size, shape, motion, position, duration and number-which give form and meaning to the confused, fragmentary data that we experience every day in our lives. While Descartes thought that experience might sometimes be required to stimulate our use of these ideas, he insisted that they were in no way formed by experience.

As a latter-day Cartesian, Chomsky certainly goes much further than Descartes when he says that principles of language are present in the mind at birth. In fact, Chomsky goes so far as to theorize that the 4,000 or so known languages all rest on the same basic principles, genetically determined, which he describes as "invariant properties," or "linguis-

tic universals," or "universal grammar." They are true of languages past and present, no matter who the speaker, no matter what the circumstances. "We can use these principles," Chomsky said one day in his office at M.LT. [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology], "in ways we don't really understand, to express our thoughts and to interpret the world around us-both to ourselves, and to others, in a new and novel fashion."

A child, in Chomsky's view, "knows" the principles of language before he says his first words; he uses these structures to learn the grammar of his own language. Of course, the child is not born with the mastery of any particular tongue. He must learn a great deal first, and he must grow, physically and emotionally, before he can grasp all of language's subtleties. "Knowledge of language," Cqomsky is careful to point out, "results from the interplay of initially given structures of the mind, maturational processes and interaction with the environment."

Chomsky's main work has been to identify boldly a number of rules and restrictions which govern the creative use of language and which we obey without being aware of them. There are obvious rules that prevent us from getting words in the wrong order and speaking nonsense-for instance, we say, "John solved the equation," but not, "Tl},e equation solved John." They also include more complex laws telling us how we can move entire phrases when changing the structure of a sentence. "I expect that the day after tomorrow he will be here" can become, "The day after tomorrow I expect he will be here," but the rules prevent its transformation into, "The day after tomorrow, I expected he would be here."

Chomsky has explained the many ambiguities in our speech by postulating a "deep structure" to language-the basic logical relations-which underlines and governs the observable "surface structure." So complex and yet so symmetrical-indeed mathematical-are the relationships he describes that many scientists cannot but believe that much of it is indeed "biological," that the rules are part of our evolutionary inheritance, and that Chomsky has somehow discovered a new passage to the mind, a new kind of psychology.

This 20th-century voyage of discovery begins rather quietly in Philadelphia, where

Chomsky's theories rest upon two observations: First, that a grammar describes a basic knowledge shared by all speakers of the language; second, that our use of language is fundamentally creative.

Avram Noam Chomsky was born in 1928, the son of a dedicated Hebrew scholar who emigrated from Russia in 1913. Noam, as he was commonly known, grew up in an unconventional, radical household which was "observant," if not deeply Orthodox in religious matters and which encouraged freewheeling, unbounded intellectual debate. Apparently a very serious and studious child, Chomsky would at the age of 12 take the train by himself from Philadelphia to New York to browse for the day in bookshops. At about the same age, he proofread the manuscript of his father's edition of a medieval Hebrew grammar. This backdoor introduction to "historical linguistics" had considerable impact in the future; it helped fuel his later conviction that the explanation of how language worked, rather than categories and description, was the business of linguistic study.

As might be expected, Chomsky busied himself in a variety of Jewish affairs. His wife, Carol (today a professor at the Harvard School of Education and author of a highly regarded study on how children between 5 and 10 learn grammatical rules), remembers meeting her husband at Hebrew School when he was seven. During adolescence, he was the perennial discussion leader and court of last resort in any argument about Hebrew grammar. One of his Hebrew teachers, Itzhak Sankowsky, recently recalled: "His brilliance couldn't really be shown off, because it was expected from his family background that he should know more Hebrew than anybody else. Superficially, you couldn't tell there was something unusual there. You had to bring it out with a debate or a bit of knowledge.

Then you knew."

After he graduated from Philadelphia's Central High in 1945, Chomsky entered the University of Pennsylvania.

Unsure what path to take, he toyed with the idea of emigrating to Israel to work for Arab-Jewish cooperation. His parents, however, introduced him to Zellig Harris, a brilliant (and politically radical) linguist at the university, and under his influence Chomsky decided to study linguistics. Before starting his formal courses in the field, he proofread Harris's great work, Methods in Structural Linguistics.

This was the way, Chomsky later claimed that he had actually learned structural linguistics -the tradition in which he was trained,

against which he rebelled, and which he ultimately overthrew.

American linguistics grew up under two influences: the fact that there were hundreds of dying American Indian languages across the continent, and the pervasive acceptance in the U.S. of behaviorist, stimulus-response psychology.

The first gave rise to the idea that each language had to be treated as unique, and that it was the linguist's job to describe its elements in its own terms, without comparison to similar elements in other languages.

This task acquired special urgency as populations of native speakers shrank and then died out.

The second meant that linguistics had no real interest in explanation-especially in explaining the psychological processes of language-but only in description. Leonard Bloomfield, the dominant force in linguistics during the first part of this century, dispensed with the entire matter of psychological process by saying that language was "speech sounds which people utter under particular stimuli." In other words, it was just one form of behavior.

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re-Chomsky, a linguist would have said that he was trying to "describe language" and "discover its grammar"-and then would have gone on to discuss the practical advantages of linguistic training for missionaries, anthropologists, adventurous businessmen and others trying to communicate with peoples speaking languages for which grammars had not yet been written. For the first few years, Chomsky worked within this tradition, first at the University of Pennsylvania and then as a junIor fellow at Harvard.

In 1953, halfway through his junior fellowship, Chomsky made a week-long voyage to Europe which gave him time to reflect on his work. He also used the time to think about another, very different linguistic effort, nothing more than a private hobby.

Several years before, while still an undergraduate, he had begun to study Hebrew in an unusual way. Remembering his own father's work, Chomsky had known that a historical linguist will look for sequences of change, one leading to another, over the centuries. Chomsky had wondered if there might also be psychological processes that worked in the same way-that is, was it possi-

ble that one's mind went through a series of steps from the initial meaning to the form the sentence took when we said it? He set about trying to construct models for such sequences, models that would represent the "psychological reality" of our language use.

To construct those models, Chomsky drew on his concurrent study of logic and mathe.: matics. He had been particularly fascinated by "generative systems"-the procedures by which a mathematician, starting with postulates and utilizing principles and inferences, can generate an infinite number of proofs. He thought that perhaps language was "generated" from a few principles as well.

No one showed any interest in this hobby, either during his undergraduate or his graduate-student years. No one even read his papers. Yet he found the results interesting, even encouragll1g. .

Now, on the boat to Europe, Chomsky asked himself why it was that his major academic work-formalizing structural linguistics-was getting nowhere. That, in turn, led him to another question, one which came back to him again and again: How is it possible that) if language is only a learned habit) one can be continually creative and innovative in its use?

By the end of the sea journey, Chomsky had come to his conclusions. Five years of work had been a failure, and would never b~ anything but a failure. For language was not just a simple habit. The tradition of struCtural linguistics-drawing on behaviorism and empiricism-went nowhere. On the other hand, his own idiosyncratic investigations-to construct "generative" models-seemed to provide a key to the questions about creativity.

Returning to Harvard, Chomsky, encouraged only by linguist Morris Halle, now his colleague at M.LT. gave up structural linguistics altogether and gave full attention to the former hobby. An outcast in the discipline of linguistics-the one article he wrote for a scholarly journal was rejected by return mail-he set down many of his basic ideas feverishly and at times chaotically in a 900page manuscript. "Things just began pouring out," he recalled. Unable to finish retyping it, he submitted one chapter to the University of Pennsylvania, on the basis of which he was awarded a Ph.D. No publisher, however, would consider publishing the manuscript or any chapter from it. A reader for the M.LT.

Press, a specialist in the once-promlsmg professor at M.l.T. And in 1965 he made a fieldof machine-translation, advised the press significant modification of transformational against printing it. He declared the work grammar in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, unintelligible, and scathingly added: "If which explained the importance of relating Mr. Chomsky ever wants to get this publish- the study of deep and surface structures to ed, he had better make himself famous first." research in semantics and phonology. By this Chomsky did, however, succeed in getting time, his "standard theory" had already capan appointment at M.LT. with the aid of tured the field.

Halle. (Even today at M.LT., Chomsky, who Chomsky's theories rest upon two oblooks considerably younger than his y'ears, servations about language. The first is that will occasionally be asked for his student a grammar describes a basic knowledge card.) One day a representative from the shared by all speakers of the language. The Dutch publisher Mouton was passing second is that our use of language is fundathrough the M.LT. linguistics department. mentally creative.

He spied a manuscript on the corner of Although we may make many mistakes in Chomsky's desk and asked what it was. our speech at any given time-perhaps beChomsky told him that it was notes for teach- . cause we are tired or confused or in a hurrying, based on the unpublished 900-page all normal speakers do possess this common. manuscript. The representative looked it over knowledge, which Chomsky calls language and said, "We'll publish it." competence. That is, we can hear a sentence So, in 1957, Mouton published Syntactic that we have never heard before, and yet Structures, the pale blue book, now in its grasp immediately its meaning and judge ninth edition, which heralded the Chomskyan whether it is "well-formed" or not-that is, Revolution. The book demonstrated that whether it is grammatically correct.

Relatively little in the way of language important facts about language could not be explained by either structurallinguistjcs or "data" is supplied to the child, in terms of by computer theory, which was then becom- things said and shown to him by those who ing fashionable in the field. In Syntactic "teach" him to speak. Yet very soon the Structures, Chomsky departed from his men- child comes to show great linguistic abilities. tors in stressing the importance of explaining This suggests a second aspect of creativity creativity in language, and introduces his -that we can, theoretically at least, sayan own transformational grammar as a more unbounded number of sentences that have "powerful" explanation of how' we make never been said before. When we do speak, sentences. moreover, it is usually coherent and approIncomprehension greeted the book initial- priate to the situation. "This creativity is ly, even among linguists. But gradually, apparent," said Chomsky, "in the richness linguists began to throw their allegiance to and complexity and enormous range of what the new theory. By 1961, Chomsky was a full you can produce. It comes down to this: You

are free to say what you want, you can say what you think, and you can think what you want."

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he crucial assertion in Chomsky's theory is that every sentence has both a surface structure and a deep structure. The surface structure "faces out" on the world and, by certain phonological rules, is converted into the sounds we hear; it corresponds to the parsing of sentences which we all learned from our indefatigable junior high English teachers. The deep structure "faces inward" toward the hazy region of conceptualization, is more abstract and related to meaning. It expresses the basic logical relations between nouns and verbs. The distinction between the surface and deep structure, which has unnecessarily baffled many people, can be demonstrated by two sentences that have the same surface structure but different deep structures. The oft-cited exampl~ is: (I) John is eager to please.

(2) John is easy to please.

On the surface, the organization of both (I) and (2) is, as every child learns in school, noun-copula-adjective-infinitive phrase.' But in (I) John is the one of whom eagerness is predicated, and he is eager to please someone else. In (2), however, easiness is predicated not of John but of pleased; and John is in fact the object of the verb in another sentence, which is closer to the deep structure: (3) It is easy to please John. The sentence (3) has been transformed into its surface structure (2) simply by shifting the object "John" to the front of the sentence, replacing "it."

This rule applies in many similar cases, wif}1 adjectives like "tough," "fun" and "impossible," but would not work with such adjectives as "possible" and "weak." (We intuitively recognize that "John is weak to please" is ill-formed.)

That the surface structure can often be misleading and ambiguous is illustrated by the ¡following example: (I) I disapprove o/John's

drinking.

The sentence can refer to the fact that John is drinking at a particular moment, or the manner in which he drinks, or his alcoholism. In other words, the sentence may derive from three other "strings" with different deep structures: (2) I disapprove of John's drinking the beer.

(3) I disapprove of the way in which John is drinking.

(4) I disapprove of John's excessive drinking.

What has happened in this case is that three deep structures have been converted to the same surface structure, transformations involving the simple deletion of a few words.

'Transformational grammar consists of a series of rules, expressed in mathematical notation, which transform deep structures into well-formed surface structures,' thus relating meaning and sound. ,

The result is ambiguous, but our language is filled with such ambiguities. Some seem to be simply the result of our efforts to save breath -to economize in speech; the speaker is normally understood by his listeners from the context. But since some words may be deleted under certain conditions and not others, it seems that deletions are determined by complex syntactic rules, and not always by simple economy.

By more elaborate transformations, we change sentences into the passive voice, into negatives, into questions and other constructions. All these operations are governed by an internalized grammar, the do's and don'ts of shifting and reassembling words and phrases, as elucidated by Chomsky and others.

To illustrate how a full sentence is transformed from deep to surface structure, take the example: "A wise man is honest." Chomsky sees the deep structure of the sentence as containing twq separate sentences (A) and (B); the deep structure, as represented on what linguists call a tree diagram, looks like this [S stands for sentence, NP for noun phrase, VP for verb phrase]:

We can now make sense of a definition: Transformational grammar consists of a limited series of rules, expressed in mathematical notation, which transform deep structures into well-formed surface structures.

The transformational grammar thus relates meaning and sound.

Though we "know" these rules, we could not rattle them off at the command of a Grand Inquisitor-any more than we could explain to the Inquisitor all the complicated "rules" we apply when we ride a bike. Knowing the rules of language, like knowing the rules of bike riding, means only that we behave in a manner that conforms to them.

Some critics attack these assertions, doubting their psychological reality and asking, "How can you know the rules if you can't see them?" Would-be students find themselves confused and mystified. Are the rules and structures any less mystical than Plato's forms? Where in the mind do they exist?

Chomsky maintains that much of the confusion results from misinterpretation. In the Russell lectures, he told a partly puzzled audience: "These structures and the operations that apply to them are postulated as mental entities in our effort to understand what one S has learned when one has come to know a human language, and to explain how sentences are formed and understood. I would like to emphasize that there is nothing strange a man S is honest or occult in this move, any more than in the ~\ postulation of genes or electrons.

NP VP "The rules in question are not laws of nature, nor, of course, are they legislated or man ~ wi~ laid down by any authority. They are, if our To derive the surface structure, according theorizing is correct, rules that are constructto Chomsky's explanation, we go through ed by the mfnd in the course of acquisition of knowledge. They can be violated, and in a threefold operation: I. Replace the lowest noun phrase (NP) fact, departure from the rules can often be on the tree with who, so we have, "A man an effective literary device."

(An illustration of an author purposely who is wise is honest."

2. Delete the resulting "who is," so we violating a rule of grammar for literary effect is this passage by Rebecca West, cited by have, "A man wise is honest."

3. Invert "man" and "wise," and we arrive Chomsky: "A copy of the universe is not at the surface structure, which looks like this what is required of art; one of the damned thing is ample." Technically, it should be on the tree diagram: "one of the damned things.")

Chomsky's new image of language, the issues which he has raised and the force with which he has raised them, have all captured the attention of many psychologists and philosophers. In fact, Chomsky has argued

NP------- ~

/ I~ I¡

/vp",

/\

that these should not be separate disciplines at all, but rather that their concerns must be integrated. Linguistics, he has frequently declared, is actually a branch of cognitive psychology.

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any philosophers have swung around to accepting transformational gram~ mar as correct. But most of them have argued against Chomsky on the larger issuethe "mentalist" or rationalist claims, or, as they call it, the "innateness hypothesis." Some have simply said that Chomsky has misread the rationalists, pulled them out of their time, and they doubt he can trace his genealogy to Descartes. Others question his proofs. "I feel that there is no evidence to support the innateness hypothesis," said Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam, who debated this question with Chomsky before the American Philosophical Association. "The human mind has a capacity for many different kinds of learning, which could in no way be called innate. The brain finished evolving long before differential calculus or theoretical physics was invented, yet both these can be learned."

A considerable number of psychologists, however, do acknowledg~ Chomsky's profound influence. He first came to the attention of psychologists as one of the most penetrating and trenchant critics of the behaviorism which had been the major orthodoxy ip American psychology. He has focused his attacks over the years on Harvard's B.F. Skinner, considered by many to be the most influential psychologist in the United States.

Learning, says Skinner, consists of a change in behavior. Behavior itself develops as a series of responses to forces or stimuli in the external world. A repertoire of behavior can be reinforced by "operant conditioning" -in the case of pigeons trained to play Pingpong, with food; in the case of languagespeaking people, in a more complex way.

"Behaviorism has a strong element of mysticism in it, despite its scientific pretensions," Chomsky said. "It has a vague, mushy quality, and it underestimates the complexity of mental organization. A physiologist does not assume that you have two arms as the result of habit and reinforcement. He would suggest a genetic explanation, and [ think thafs true for the mind as well." Chomsky's closely reasoned arguments have succeeded in convincing many psychologists that be-

haviorism is indeed "pretentious," that its vocabulary has little meaning, and that its purported explanations explain little.

One psychologist much influenced by Chomsky is George Miller of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies. "We have an inherent ability to perceive the world and profit from experience," he said. "In other words, we have innate general-purpose cognitive mechanisms. The question raised by Chomsky in psychology is whether these general mechanisms are sufficient to explain the acquisition of language by children-or are there mechanisms whose only purpose is to enable us to recognize language?"

Many of the human characteristics associated with language are genetically determined-for instance, the shape of the throat and the nature of the facial muscles, which make it possible for us to produce a large variety of sounds, or the fact that the left side of the brain is concerned with language.

"How much farther do you want to go with language-specific innate mechanisms?" asked Miller. "Chomsky wants to go much farther than most people."

Chomsky's most daring theory is the assertion that the Tower of Babel is firmly planted atop the "linguistic universals" or "universal grammar," which are genetically

determined and common to all men. We can illustrate a universal with a cat named Fritz: 1. Fritz will order ice cream.

Now let us turn that into a question.

2. What will Fritz order?

But now we discover that Fritz ad,ores mixed desserts like ice cream and cake, and ice cream and peaches; whatever, he always insists that ice cream be one of the components. Knowing this, we want to ask a very straightforward question: 3. What will Fritz order ice cream and?

We instantly recognize that we cannot ask such a question. The principle at work tells us that we cannot move one item out of a

CHOMSKY THROUGH INDIAN EYES "Chomsky will be remembered not so much for providing the right answers as for asking the right questions." Together with other linguists, this view is held by Dr. C. J. Daswani, Associate Professor in Linguistics at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. And it is an endorsement of the generally accepted fact that Chomsky has changed the very concept . of linguistics, enlarging its scope and extending its boundaries, revealing its relationship to other academic disciplines, and leading it into exciting new avenues of exploration.

"Even if you disagree with Chomsky," Daswani says, "you can't do so without first relating your position to his. My own doctoral dissertation starts with the claim that Chomsky is wrong. One of my main points of difference is that his theory is based largely on syntax, to the neglect of semantics. So far, he has relegated meaning to the background, but his recent work indicates that this attitude is changing."

Another drawback with Chomsky, Daswani feels, is that he has not paid enough attention to language as it exists in society -to the social significance of language.

"But the irony is," he says, "that even the sociolinguists who disagree so vehemently with Chomsky are forced to use linguistic techniques devised by him."

Extremely important, Daswani believes, is Chomsky's differentiation between surface structure and deep structure. "At the linguistic level," he says, "it shows us how a language is patterned, what are the rules governing it. And Chomsky has definitely proved that surface structu~ does not reveal all-at least from the standpoint of understanding how a language.works."

The ability of a child to generate an infinite number of sentences is dealt with in Chomsky's theory of "innateness"-that every child is genetically geared to use language, that there is a neurological mechanism which enables him to learn any language he is exposed to. Studying this facility will give us insights not only into the nature of language but also into the mysterious working of the human mind. "One problem with the innateness theory," Daswani says, "is that it rejects the theory of evolution. My own feeling is that human language must have evolved from some subhuman system of communication."

Related to innateness is Chomsky's theory of universals-that all languages have certain basic structures in common.

On this, Daswani says: "Recent linguistic research seems to indicate that there may be a valid basis for this theory. In fact, linguists are now in the process of discovering an abstract universal grammar."

Chomsky's major contribution, says Daswani, is that "he has shown us the only fruitf~l way of analyzing languageby setting up its deep structure." The Indian professor adds that no course in linguistics can be given today without reference to Chomsky. His books are essential reading for any Indian linguistics student.

Of Chomsky as a teacher, Daswani has just one word to say-"Fantastic!"

He explains: "In the summer of 1966, I took two of his' courses at UCLA; it was quite an experience. He's enormously well read -in psychology, in mathematics, in philosophy. He talks about Aristotle as though he played marbles with him. Actually, he seems to talk about everything but linguistics. And he has that charismatic kind

of personality that keeps one spellbound.

As y~u know, people in Delhi saw something of this when he came here in 1972 to deliver the Nehru Memorial Lecture.

At UCLA, I remember, none of his classes were¡ attended by less than 300 to 400 people. Yet when exam time' came around,there were just eight of us."

"As long as you're within hearing distance of Chomsky," Daswani concludes, "you don't for a minute doubt that what he says is the truth."

The same ambivalent attitude toward Chomsky is shared by Dr. Sisir Kumar Das, Reader in Bengali at Delhi U niversity's School of Modern Indian Languages.

Asked if he agrees with the innateness theory, Das replies: "Yes, and no. I think there's nothing wrong with the logical, theoretical evolution of his theory, but I don't think he has produced enough empirical evidence to support it."

Speaking of the application of Chomskyan methods to Indian languages, Das points out that a transformational grammar for Tamil has been written at Annamalai University, and that a Hindi transformational grammar has been produced at the University of Illinois. Chomsky's influence, Das believes, transcends linguistics and makes itself felt in such fields as psychology and philosophy. He adds: "I feel his work will also help in literary studies-in analyses of literary styles, in understanding modern poetry."

"Chomsky is certainly one of the tallest figures in the history of linguistics," says Das. "And he has an added dimensionthat of a thinker. Never before has a linguist attained the stature of a Bertrand Russell or an Arnold Toynbee."

'His vision of a complex universe within the mind, governed by myriad rules and prohibitions and yet infinite in its creative potential, opens up vistas possibly as i~portant as Einstein's theories.' "co-ordinate structure" (i.e. ice cream and something). As it turns out, this is a universal restrittion which applies in every known language. It is just such a restriction that Chomsky calls a linguistic universal.

The postulation of such universals is Chomsky's most controversial claim, but he defends it with vigor. "I know it sounds contradictory, but if you think about it, it's ,Very natural. Quartets and sonnets are interesting because they operate within certain restraints. If you drop the whole system of constraints, you can't produce anything of value, The same is true here. It is precisely because of the very narrow restrictive initial system that you can develop a fantastically rich competence of a very explicit sort without too much data, and then use it freely for expressing and thinking. And that, I guess, is the basic use of language."

Evidence for linguistic universals has come from psychologists and linguists at Berkeley and Harvard, )Vho, influenced both by Chomsky's insistence on beginning with the facts of competence and creativity and by his model of transformational grammar, have compared the speech patterns of children roughly 18 to 24 months old, growing up in families speaking 30 different languages as diverse as English, Samoan, Finnish and Japanese. At this age, with an average vocabulary of 200 words, the children are beginning to form simple two- and three-word sentences. In all languages, the sentences formed show almost identical grammatical features-"the amount of invariance in acquisition order is quite impressive both with respect to meaning and syntax," observes Harvard psychologist Roger Brown-but the grammar differs strikingly from that used by a native adult speaker in anyone of those languages.

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he question of language acquisition remains mostly a puzzle. Careful studies of parent-child' interaction have found no indication that children acquire linguistic knowledge for the reasons-such as parental correcting-that people commonly think. Parents will correct obviously false statements, certain kinds of mispronunciations, dirty words and trivial errors. But they almost never, no matter what they think, explicitly correct grammar. This type of evidence is 90nsistent with the theory of transformational grammar,

which insists that the mind itself structures the language data from the world.

Some psychologists who accept transformational grammar think they can explain why a child acquires the transformational ability. As his vocabulary increases and he finds more things he wants to say, deep structures themselves become an increasingly inefficient way to communicate. The language pressure becomes too great. It is simply more efficient to say "a wise man is honest" than "a man who is wise is a man who is honest."

Transformational rules give him the ability to use a language economically and precisely.

The question then becomes: How much support does modern biology really afford?

When interviewed in his office at M.LT., Chomsky grew suddenly cautious: "-Biology is just too far away," he admitted. "No one understands how the complicated neurological systems function." , On the other hand, some biologists do not think the gap is so enormous. "There is one way that Chomsky's structural approach has been proved, and that is in visual perception," said Gunther Stent, professor of biology and a brain researcher at the University of California. "Visual perception is a direct analogue to language, and recent studies show that visual experience is processed in the mind according to the way Chomsky and others have posited. There has not been any direct proof that language is based on the innate generative grammar, but it has been shown that the brain does work in that general way."

And the point has been even more forcefully stated by the Nobel Prize-winning French geneticist Jacques Monod, who wrote in' Chance and Necessity that contemporary scientific discoveries furnish support to Descartes and Kant and "urge against the uncompromising empiricism which has held almost continual sway in science for the past 200 years, casting suspicion upon any hypothesis positing the innateness -of cognitive frames of reference."

Monod added that experience is processed and used through a "program" that 'is "innate, that is to say, genetically determined.

The program's structure initiates and guides early learning, which will follow a certain pre-established pattern defined in the species' genetic patrimony. This, in all likelihood, is the process whereby the child acquires language. "

By the late 1960s, it seemed that almost all academic linguists would soon be gathered within the Chomskyan tent. But, listening carefully, one would have already heard simmering sounds of discontent. That discontent has now broken into full-scale debate between the Chomskyans and the generative semanticists. The most significant issue in con. temporary linguistics, the argument that threatens to rip Chomsky's tent wide open, focuses on technical questions about the relation of meaning to deep structure.

Chomsky tends to downplay his argument with the generative semanticists. There are differences, he admits; for example, he says they deny the existence of a deep syntactic structure (though their notion of an underlying semantic structure sounds remarkably similar).

"It's not a Homeric struggle between schools but simply two different termfnologies," Chomsky says about the debate. On the other hand, the generative semanticists, not surprisingly, say that he is only "patching up" his theory to meet their objections. The lines are not fully drawn yet, and Chomsky's tent is still intact-although he may now be a minority in his field on the question of meaning.

Whatever their disagreements with Chomsky, the generative semanticists accept as given his basic premise of an innate, theoreti-fI cal, underlying grammar as well as many, of the specific rules he has described. His theory remains the foundation of linguistics today.

His vision of a complex universe within the mind, governed by myriad rules and prohibitions and yet infinite in its creative potential, opens up vistas possibly as important as Einstein's theories. But the impact of Chomsky's work may not be felt for many years to come.

Chomsky himself describes his work as "only the barest beginnings toward understanding the whole rich area of linguistic experience. " Yet this beginning has revolutionized the study of language and has redirected and redefined the broad inquiry into intelligence and how it works.

0 About the Author: Daniel Yergin is a research fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard. He is a frequent contributor of articles to such publications as Harper's, Atlantic, Yale Review, and the New York Times Magazine.

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Hl!:.WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE U. S. IN

? â&#x20AC;˘ A robot that will land on Mars and look for life; a joint project with the Soviet Union; a space shuttle that will carry nonastronaut passengers into outer space: these American projects of the next five years are described on the following pages. The distant future may yield 'far out' ventures and vistas-such as close-ups of Jupiter from its moon Amalthea (artist's conception above).

Above: Jupiter's Great Red Spot, as seen/rom its innermost moon, Amalthea.

Pioneer 11 close-ups show that the mysterious "spot" is an immense 400-year-old hurricane. Left: A model of the space shuttle the u.S. will launch in 1979.

T

he world ran out of superlatives on July 21, 1969,when man landed on the Moon.

But the Moon was only a steppingstone to more distant worlds. Now, man is preparing to land on Mars, Jupiter and the outer planets, even to explore the mysterious and endless universe beyond the solar system. "The Earth we live in," says Carl Sagan, the distinguished astronomer, "is a tiny clod of rock and metal, a planet smaller than some relatively minor features in the clouds of Jupiter."

Questions which once belonged to the realm of the great unknown may soon be answered. Is there life on Mars? On what date will we land on one of Jupiter's moons?

When will we communicate with intelligent life in other galaxies? When will space vehicles begin taking nonastronaut "tourists" to the Moon? How far can man go into space without the rigorous training of an astronaut?

The U.S. space program is seeking answers to these questions-though it may be a while before it answers all of them.

During the next five years, America is planning two manned space missions: a joint venture this year with the Soviet Union, the first \

Left: This dramatic painting shows a Viking spacecraft in orbit around Mars. Its four "arms" are solar panels that power the craft. A white blanket protects its rocket motor from the sun. The deflated balloon (bottom right) has descended through the Martian atmosphere to the surface of the red planet, transporting a vehicle (not in picture) that will explore Mars.

The U.S. will launch two Viking spacecraft in August 1975; they will land on Mars in 1976.

of its kind; and in 1979 the space shuttle, which will enable "commoners" like you and me to soar into ethereal realms along with the "royalty" of space, the astronauts. During the same period, unmanned missions will explore Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (see "Detente in Space" in "Americans Are Talking About," January 1975 SPAN) is a lO-day mission during which a three-man American Apollo craft will link in space with a two-man Russian Soyuz craft. Crew members will exchange visits, share a meal and perform joint experiments for two days. The two craft will return to Earth separately.

All manned American and Soviet spacecraft will henceforth incorporate facilities for linking with each other, to permit rescue of astronauts in distress. Joint space missions like Apollo-Soyuz will also avoid duplication in space ventures and thereby cut costs of both nations' space programs. (Some day Indian and American spacecraft could link in space-as Astronaut Walter Schirra pointed out in Delhi a few years ago.)

The most ambitious unmanned space project in history-the Viking mission to Marsalso begins this year. Supported on the grpund by a work force of 10,000 American engineers and specialists, two Viking spacecraft will take off in August 1975, within 10 days of each other, and travel 700 million kilometers to reach Mars in about a year. The first Viking will land on Mars on July 4, 1976, the 200th anniversary of American Independence.

Each Viking will send identical "landers" (as large as compact automobiles) to the Martian surface. With long mechanical arms, the landers will scoop up samples of Martian soil and deliver them to "biology boxes" inside the craft. These boxes will contain three auto-

Left: A technician at the RCA Space Center in Hightstown, New Jersey, tests an ultrahigh frequency radio which the Viking "lander" will use on Mars.

Left, center: A researcher at the RCA Missile and Surface Radar Plant in Moorestown, New Jersey, examines a tiny antenna, one of three which the Viking will carry to help relay messages between Mars and Earth.

Extreme left: At the Johnson Space Center in Houston, American and Soviet crews of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project discuss their "linking mission" in space-which will take place in July 1975. The three U.S. astronauts (left) are seated on a model of the docking module that will link the two spacecraft. The two Soviet astronauts ( at right) are atop a model of their Soyuz spacecraft's docking module.

Left: Launch of the space shuttle. It takes off like a rocket, flies in orbit like a spacecraft, and returns to Earth like a conventional plane.

It can carry satellites for release in space and passenger-scientists who will conduct research.

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~--'-------------The spirit of the U.S. space program is best expressed by space scientist Wernher von Braun who once said: 'Man belongs wherever he wants to go-and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.'

The shuttle sequence is demonstrated in three drawings above. Clockwise from left: Shuttle is launched; shuttle links with satellite in space; shuttle comes in for landing on conventional airport runway after completing mission.

mated chemical laboratories, a computer, tiny liquid fuel tank-the only piece that will not be reused-will burn out. Between 1979 and ovens, filters, a sun lamp, 40 thermostats, 22,000 transistors and 18,000 other electronic 1990, some 700 shuttles will be launched.

The shuttle will enable the U.S. to conparts. Instruments in the biology boxes will test the Martian soil for signs of life. The tinue space exploration in the most effective landers will also "sniff" the Martian atmos- and economical way possible. How? First phere to determine its constituents, measure of all, the shuttle can be used again and again. wind speeds, temperatures and humidity, and It can itself become an inexpensive system determine the chemistry of the surface. Mete- for putting satellites into orbit: A single shuttle launch can hoist three satellites into orologists believe that studying Martian weather will help them improve the accuracy space and into precise orbit at different spots of long-range weather forecasts on Earth. around Earth. The shuttle can repair satellites Another pair of Vikings will visit Mars in in space or retrieve old satellites.

1979. In 1986, a Viking mission will actually But equally important in terms of economy, put a vehicle on the Martian surface to drive the space shuttle will reduce the cost of around and conduct experiments there. Mid- launching deep-space probes. Sending a way between the first two Viking missions, spacecraft to the Moon or Mars from an the U.S. will launch two Mariner spacecraft Earth launching pad requires enormous and in 1977, which will pass Jupiter in 1979 and costly rockets to overcome the strong gravbrush by Saturn two years later. itational pull at sea level on the Earth's Two other planets, Mercury and Venus, surface. However, to launch a craft frqm a have already been reconnoitered by American permanent space station in Earth orbit would spacecraft. In March 1974, Mariner 10 pro- require only a fraction of the rocket power. vided man with. his first close-up view of Thus, the space shuttle will take astronauts, Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar sys- their spacecraft and their rockets from the tem; en route, it flew by the cloud tops of Earth to the orbiting space station. Similarly, Venus. And in December, Pioneer 11 flew past on the astronauts' return journey they need Jupiter, 800 million kilometers from the Earth, not plunge into the atmosphere and splash penetrating-and surviving-the powerful helplessly into the ocean, but would dock radiation belts that surround the sun's largest at the space station, and enjoy a bath and planet. It will enter the gravitational field of change of clothes before entering the space Saturn in 1979. shuttle for the trip to Earth, where it will Around 1979, the U.S. will resume man- land on a normal airport runway. ~ ned exploration with a space shuttle-a These are the major space programs the vehicle that will revolutionize space trans- United States is planning for the near future. portation. Although the shuttle will be oper- In addition, the U.S. will continue launching ated by highly trained crews, most of the a variety of Earth-orbit satellites to study work-experiments in astronomy, medicine, navigation, the Earth's atmosphere, weather, physics-will be done by nonastronauts in the oceans, astronomy, and a host of other casual civilian dress without any rigorous things. In 1975 alone, the U.S. is sending up training. ThIS is possible because the vehicle 25 spacecraft, 12 of which are owned by other will have an "earth-air" environment. nations or U.S. agencies other than the NaThe space shuttle is a four-piece combina- tional Aeronautics and Space Administration. tion consisting of an "Orbiter" or passenger (The first satellite launched this year was the vehicle that resembles a conventional plane, ERTS-B, one of a family of highly sophistitwo booster rockets, and a liquid fuel tank. cated satellites that will survey the Earth's Each mission will last about seven days; the agricultural, mineral and water resources.

Orbiter will return to Earth at the end of the And in June, of course, the ATS-6 launched mission and can be used as many as 100 times. last year will beam educational television The booster rockets will drop on parachutes programs from a stationary orbit over Kenya into the ocean shortly after the shuttle lifts to more than 5,000 Indian villages.) off-to be recovered and used again. The The spirit of the U.S. space program is best expressed by Dr. Wernher von Braun, one of America's most distinguished space sciLeft: In this painting, Pioneer 11, which entists, who once said: "Man belongs wheron December 3 swung past Jupiter (surface in ever he wants to go-and he'll do plenty well foreground), is moving toward the planet when he gets there."

0 Saturn (top left), which it will pass in 1979.

SPACE AGEART From the very beginning, cameras have focused on every phase of the American space program, recording factual history. But, as Daumier pointed out more than a century ago, the camera has everything but understands nothing. To provide new insights into space travel the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in co-operation with Dr. H. Lester Cooke of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., commissioned several American artists to paint aspects of the space program. "Space travel started in the imagination of the artist," said Dr. Cooke, "and it is reasonable that artists should be recorders of our efforts in this field." SPAN presents here a sampling from the works of space art that resulted.

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DR. EHRICKE'S ~

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by A.E. MAXWELL

The father of Skylab, Dr. Krafft Ehricke, believes that we can mine the mineral resources of the 'dead' planets around us, place nuclear power plants on the Moon, and preserve the Earth as the garden of the solar system.

"Ever since the first manned lunar circumnavigation there has been no letup in deploring the fact that the Moon and other planets are dead, hostile and, by implication, useless.

This attitude has destroyed even a moderate priority rating for the lunar program. It was not and is not recognized that we are most fortunate to have a large dead planet nearby.

Because of it our living planet, and human civilization on it, -DR. KRAFFT EHRICKE can stay alive."

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'"=t Krafft Ehricke is an outraged and sometimes outrageous man. In 1956 he had the audacity to suggest that space exploration would be a lot simpler if we first developed a half airplane, half spaceship, which he called a satelloid. He missed on the name, but 19 years later American space effort has shifted from multistaged rockets to something called the space shuttle-half airplane and half spaceship.

7 C-t -) 34 ~ In 1947 (with such colleagues as Wernher von Braun), he came to the harsh Texas desert at Fort Bliss to work on America'sfledgling rocket program. In the 1950s Ehricke went to what was then Convair Astronautics in San Diego, California, where he became known as "the father of the A tlasCentaur," a hybrid multistage vehicle that was a mainstay in early space exploration. But while von Braun and others became celebrities for their work with America's manned space program, Ehricke began thinking beyond Apollo. He envisioned an orbiting space observatory, which some referred to as "Ehricke's Orbiting Outhouse" but ultimately became known as "Skylab."

Dr. Ehricke has generated a coherent set of principles based on his belief that man must use space to solve Earth's problems in a way that will allow man to grow toward his full potential. This belief, which he refers to as "the extraterresirial imperative," seems in direct contradiction to the presently popular prognostications of /nan's future, such as those enunciated in The Club of Rome's book The Limits to Growth ....

QUESTION: Dr. Ehricke,. you advocate the uses of space at a time when most people are concerned only with the environmental abuses on Earth. Is the distance between your concerns and the environmentalists' as great as it appears?

EHRICKE: Our goals are the same: to make Earth the garden of the solar system. But the Limits to Growth people see Earth as a life raft in hostile space. Hence, they see man's world as a closed system-restricted to Earth. I don't.

Humanity's action world is no more closed than it is flat.

QUESTION: Then Dennis Meadows [director of the Limits to Growth project] and Jay Forrester [the pioneering M.I.T. theoretician], the future?

et al., are wrong in their conclusions about

EHRICKE: Their frame of reference is too small. Among other things, they made a straight-line extrapolation from present trends, with the intuitive assumption that man's world is as closed as the biosphere simply because that was always so in the past. That's like an embryo in the eighth month saying, "It's getting tight in here. Lots of waste floating around. I've got to work harder to get what I need."

Now when the embryo projects into the ninth month, he gets awfully unhappy. The tenth and eleventh months look even worse. So in the eighth month the embryo might conclude that he's got to stop growing. The embryo is unaware that in the ninth month there will be a major change in the frame of reference: birth.

QUESTION: The closed environment of the womb exchanged for the open world?

EHRICKE: Yes. Man has looked at the Earth as a womb.

The Earth cannot much longer be an all-supplying womb for man. It must be looked at as a home, a castle, a center of growth. We can reach a new equilibrium with our environment by expanding our resource bases to include the solar system.

QUESTION: Don't we run the distinct risk of simply expanding our area of pollution?

EHRICKE: No, because pollution is a local concept, cosmically speaking. Pollution is lack of "local" environmental compatibility. Environmental compatibility, how-

'We must realize that Earth is a passenger ship in the convoy of our stars. The rest of the planets are freighters and we should be taking on resources from the freighters.'

ever, is a relative thing. What's detrimental on Earth can be perfectly compatible with the lunar or any other extraterrestrial environment. Many important industrial processes are environmentally compatible on Moon or in orbit but not on Earth-for example, nuclear-powered industrial processes or the release of large amounts of waste heat.

We are not the only animal that befouls its own nest. Rather we are the only animal that, so far, has nowhere else to go.

All creatures need several environments commensurate with the scope of their respective metabolic processes. When you housebreak a dog, you teach him environmental compatibility.

QUESTION: Again, it's a question of your frame of reference.

EHRICKE: Yes. Man is just at the beginning of his growth.

And this beginning will be snuffed out if we are restricted to one planet. Just as the brain development in fish could go only so far in one environment. In order to go further the brain needed new environments that were more demanding-land and air. Some people haven't learned that yet; some even advocate returning to the womb. Impossible, of course. Certain death.

QUESTION: Other than shrinking ourselves down to fit the environment, what can we do?

EHRICKE: As early as 1963 I made the statement that the ultimate purpose of exploring the solar system is not just to gain scientific information. It is to broaden our resource base, to preserve Earth as a garden of the solar system. This was taken as a very far-out and unrealistic reason for interplanetary flight.

QUESTION: Beating the Russians to the Moon was the goal we heard of most. Now that we've done that, people seem to have lost interest.

EHRICKE: And now the spin-off benefits of Apollo and others are used as an apology for a project that needed no apology. People are told that because we've been to the Moon we now have a better frying pan and a better fountain pen with which we can write on butter under water. They say, "I don't want to write on butter under water." Even if they are told that they now have better monitoring in intensive-care wards of hospitals or better management of their electric company, which may cut a penny or two off their kilowatt hour, they say, "Listen buddy, you still haven't given me any reason to go to the Moon. Those things could have been done on Earth."

QUESTION: It also seems that many people, from scientists to schoolchildren, felt a bit cheated that the Moon was so very dead. All those myths destroyed.

EHRICKE: Yes. Ever since the first manned lunar circumnavigation, there has been no letup in deploring the fact that the Moon and other planets are dead, hostile and, by implication, useless. This attitude has destroyed even a moderate priority rating for the lunar program. It was not and is not recognized that we are most fortunate to have a large dead planet nearby: Because of it, our living planet, and human civilization on it, can stay alive.

QUESTION: How? EHRICKE: Raw materials, for one. Earth's metal resources

are finite, limited. Already we must chew up more and more land for less and less rich ore. Mining produces the largest amount of inorganic waste of any industry.

We must realize that Earth is not, as some call it, a "spaceship" traveling in isolation. Earth is a passenger ship, the only passenger ship, in the convoy of our stars.

The rest of the planets are freighters. Right now the passengers on Earth seem intent on tearing up the stateroom furniture to use it for resources when they should be taking on resources from the freighters.

The Apollo Moon rocks have shown us that oxides of iron, aluminum, calcium, magnesium, titanium and silicon make up between 97 and 100 per cent of the material resources of the Moon. Of course, the metals are not found in convenient concentrations and would require nuclear mining techniques.

On the Moon there is no underground water to get contaminated, no biosphere, nothing to be poisoned by nuclear blasts. The Moon is an inorganic environment. It is exposed all the time to what we would call massive pollution in Earth's biosphere-ultraviolet radiation, X rays, solar wind and solar flares. On the Moon we can detonate 10megaton bombs, and it's just a pinprick compared to the radiation these environments are exposed to all the time.

QUESTION: The idea of nuclear blasts as compatible with an environment-that's difficult to believe.

EHRICKE: Only if you just think in terms of Earth's environment and say that what is bad for this environment is bad for the Moon. No. What is bad for the Moon is a nice pile of organic matter-cow dung. And what is bad for the Earth is a nuclear detonation. The concept of environmental

compatibility has to be understood; you do things where they are most compatible with the existing environment.

An enormously large number of products can be produced on the Moon for Earth's benefit. Pipe, cables, for instance. With vacuum techniques, industrial piping could be coated to last forever. No lead paint comes loose. Much better for people. Titanium for marine technology-underwater cities. I can simply go on and on. There are so many possibilities. There is material for thousands of geniuses and millions of intelligent people.

QUESTION: Can the Moon also- help solve Earth's energy crisis?

EHRICKE: Indirectly, lunar industries would help, of course. Once again, our problem is that we need more energy than we can safely generate with fossil sources within the biosphere of Earth. Ultimately, solar power wil1 be almost exclusively utilized right here on Earth.

We do have nuclear power generators and they work fine. But there are real-and imagined-problems associated with their proliferation. The economics of power transmission dictates that power plants be located close to population concentrations and industria! load centers. But if we put them into remote areas, we need better means of power transmission over large distances. Then nuclear plants could be put in places where they would be relatively more compatible with the environment and, above all, away from the high-burden regions.

QUESTION: How do you get the power from distant planets to the co'!.sumers cheaply?

EHRICKE: By microwave relay. Conveit the electric energy into microwave energy and beam it at a power relay satellite. The satellite then reflects it to a conversion station near the consumer area.

QUESTION: That leaves only the problem of radioactive waste disposal.

EHRICKE: You can bury hot waste on the Moon. Or you can use Jupiter's gravitational field as a "slingshot" to boost waste into interstel1ar space.

Now, whenever I suggest putting wastes into the biggest space-time wastebasket there is-interstellar space-I immediately get a response like, "What about all those little green men going from place to place out there?" Well, if those Captain Kirks can't dodge a few cans of waste, they've got no business being there, and natural interstellar debris would have gotten them long ago. Even if I were to take the trouble of aiming the wastes at our nearest star, Alpha Centauri-which would take special nastiness for me to do, not to mention the time and machinery to keep it on its precise course-even if I were nasty enough to aim hot wastes at a possible abode of intelligence, it would still take 150,000 years to make the trip. By then the waste would be as harmless as a bag ofWheaties [American breakfast cereal].

QUESTION: Materials, energy. What about population?

Can the Moon and near space help?

EHRICKE: The idea of other planets as an outlet for our excess population is, of course, totally absurd. Mars, Mercury, the Moon-even if we could use them in that way, they would barely make an area the size of Earth.

Now, a few countries p.ave made the transition from a scientific-agricultural society with high birth, low death rates to the industrial-consumer society with lower birth rates. The industrial-consumer society does not reward large families economical1y as does the scientific-agricultural

society. You can't afford lots of kids and the good life, too. Thus, if you want lower birth rates, then you must have more consumption. But to do that and still live on Earth you must move as much production as possible away from the area of consumption.

Put our machine-animals, with their waste-producing propensities, outside the biosphere.

Short of catastrophe, or a garrison state, it's our only chance. We must enlarge our world.

QUESTION: The extraterrestrial imperative.

EHRICKE: Exactly.

QUESTION: Then you feel that the alternatives outlined in The Limits to Growth are less than reasonable?

EHRICKE: The notion that man will, in the centuries and millennia ahead, submit to a slowly declining living standard in "harmony" with a slowly degrading terrestrial environment is, of course, not an impossible one-but it seems to me rather absurd.

QUESTION: History indicates that a war M'er the division of the shrinking pie is more likely than a sudden decision to share and share alike.

EHRICKE: You cannot give if there is nothing to give. It would be insane for the "haves"-the community of industrial nations-to rejoin the "have-nots" instead of employing their own technological resources to assure growth and an unlimited future for all mankind.

QUESTION: This unlimited future will be expensive to build.

EHRICKE: Of course. But it will be as or more expensive to pursue planned regression, and you will get a hel1 of a lot less for your time, money and trouble than if you had developed the open world. How can anybody in his right mind actually say to a mankind that has millions of years ahead, that has cosmic powers at its disposal, whose knowledge grows by leaps and bounds, that begins to understand what makes a quasar and a neutron star-how can you say to this mankind that for now and forever it is in solitary confinement on a shrinking world, and that's all there is, buddy!

The cheapest thing is to say that we've got to establish new value systems. What value systems? Go down? Get smaller? Get poorer? Get hungrier? Get more wretched?

The cost of a frustrated mankind that tries tO,cripple its mind the way Chinese women used to cripple their feetthe regimentation, the monotony-is total1y incompatible with the sweeping statement "Well, let them have new values." It's about as responsible and reasonable as Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake."

And you do this in the face of millions of ideals that you can give to the generations of today and tomorrow: going out and exploring the solar system and planning and building and producing so that people down here can live in dignity and freedom on an Earth that is again clean, an Earth that feeds everyb.ody, in a mankind that is shielded from wars.

The naysayers are the pol1uters of our future. They deny vital options to future generations.

Everybody is running around saying we can't grow any more. That will be a self-fulfilling prophecy unless someone stands up and says, "Oh yes we can!"

Those who think we have reached the end of our tether live in an even more unreal world than those who in the last century advocated closing the patent offices because their mousy minds could not comprehend that there might be anything left to invent.

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tis safe to predict that 50 years from movement produces the effect of larger now, people will look back and wonder antennas than they realIy have), will conhow man ever managed his affairs on his duct these surveys even through permanent limited planetary abode without the tools overcast and at night. provided by the space program. That there The satellite search for nonrenewable resources will be combined with a concould ever have been a world without spacecraft will be just as difficult for them tinuing survey of cyclically renewable reto imagine as one without telephones and sources, such as the yearly food and fabric crops and the 30-year cutting and reforairlines is for us.

In 2025 mankind will be faced with estation cycle of timberland. Ever since many problems that can only be tackled ERTS-l, America's first Earth Resources successfully by a global, co-ordinated Technology Satellite, demonstrated in 1972 systems approach. Successful solutions to its uncanny ability to distinguish, from these problems will require continuous orbit, the subtle differences between the monitoring and surveying of the entire spectral reflectivities of different crops, this Earth, supported by an effective communi- orbital fact-gathering technique has been perfected beyond the fondest expectations. cations system capable of transmitting the large quantities of collected data and By the turn of the century, resource satelpictorial information in real time to a lites will be collecting, as a matter of roumultitude of users in almost 100 nations. tine, precise global data on the local and Unmanned Earth survey and communica- worldwide yield of such food crops as tions satellites and orbiting manned ob- corn, wheat, rye, barley, rice, and soyservatories will form the backbone of beans, and of fiber crops like cotton and sisal. As a fleet of these satellites circle the this system.

The dominating problems of humanity Earth in their low, near-polar orbits, they during the next 50 years that will require will enable the data centers on the ground such aid from space will arise from the continually to update their crop prediccollision between man's happy-go-lueky tions. For instance, wherever the sensors joy ride of unrestrained and unlimited of a satellite detect a region where pregrowth-both in numbers of people and viously unspoiled fields had suffered from their material expectations-and the grim flood, drought, hailstorm, or insect inlimitations of resources the Earth can festation, the "update" will. enable the data center to correct its previous estimate. provide and of wastes it can absorb.

Some of these problems are already The same satellites will also produce a upon us today. The sudden shortage in continuing record of the pattern of worldfuel oil and gasoline made us shockingly wide human habitation. Built-up urban aware of our dependence on resources that areas, characteristically lacking the chloro.phyll-signature of vegetation, will stand for too long we have taken for granted.

We would be tragically mistaken if we out like sore thumbs on the satellitetook our present energy crisis as an isolated produced Earth pictures.

Thus the satellites will provide the two incident-brought about by profit-hungry key pieces of quantitative information reoil moghuls-as a problem of a temporary nature that will soon be resolved. We quired for a badly needed worldwide foodshould rather accept it as a timely and supply management system: deadly serious storm warning. Not only is â&#x20AC;˘ Where is the food, and how much of our automotive joy ride over (a ride made it will be available for consumption? possible only by a hitherto unlimited sup- - ("supply") ply of cheap energy from oil), but also we â&#x20AC;˘ Where on Earth are all those hungry will have to learn to utilize more intel- mouths that must be fed? ("demand") The big computers in the resource data ligently our planet's scarce resources in metal ores and its limited ability to produce centers then can figure out what options food for its exploding population. are available to the world economy to During the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, a satisfy the regional calorie and protein reworldwide satellite search will be initiated quirements and to stave off mass starvafor additional deposits of metal ores, coal, tion in regions of critical crop failure. oil, shale, and natural gas. Using multiIn addition to their usefulness with spectral scanners and other sophisticated short-term problems, however, the Earthoptical devices, the orbital prospectors will looking satellites will also provide man collect picture material that, by compari- with a deeper understanding of many of son with known ore or fossil-fuel deposits, the long-term implications of his induscan point out promising sites for closer trial civilization. For instance, they can scrutiny by ground crews. "Side-lopking" settle the old controversy as to whether the orbital radars, with "synthetic apertures" Earth as a planet is gradually getting (radars so designed that their own orbital warmer because of the "greenhouse" effect

created by the great amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere through man's massive burning of fossil fuels, or whether the opposite is true, that it is actualIy getting colder because those same offensive smokestacks and exhaust pipes increase the average cloudiness and thus reduce the percentage of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface.

The concern is well founded. In the former case even a few degrees' rise in the Earth's average temperature would suffice to melt, within a few hundred years, the ice caps and glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. As a result, the ocean level would rise about 15 meters, inundating all of the world's coastal cities. In the latter case, our industrial activities might trigger another Ice Age, with equally disastrous consequences. The answer (which the author's crystal ball refuses to yield) . will be found by carefully measuring from orbit, over a period of many years, the minute changes in the Earth's albedo, or percentage of sunlight reflected back into outer space.

Another problem of potentially grave long-term consequences is the pollution of the continental shelves. The shelves comprise only three per cent of the total ocean area; but as they extend only to depths of a few hundred feet, which sunlight can stilI penetrate, they provide the abode for Wernher von Braun, one of today's foremost space scientists, was the chief brain behind placing America's first artificial satellite, Explorer I, in orbit and in developing the Saturn liquid-fueled rockets for the Apollo project. He has been honored by innumerable organizations for his contributions to space technology. The author of a large number of books on space, Von Braun is now a vice president of Fairchild Industries.

About the Author:

Around the year 2000, a base on the Moon 'will be the site of a milestone event: the birth of the first lunar baby.'

the bulk of all photosynthesis-supported marine plant life. Because marine animals feed, directly or indirectly, on this plant life, the continental shelves actually support much of the life at sea.

The problem now is that many of the world's polluted rivers do not really flow into the wide-open oceans, but rather onto the continental shelves. What makes it even worse is that the steady sea breezes drive the dirty river waters back to shore and thus often pollute hundreds of miles of shelf to the right and left of the estuary.

The global environmental effects of this extended pollution of the shelves are virtually unknown. Some scientists are concerned that one effect may be a slow but substantial reduction of the oxygen content of our atmosphere. They believe that the ocean's plankton (which is affected by the health of the shelves) accounts for possibly as much as 50 per cent of all oxygen regeneration out of carbon dioxide, with only the other 50 per cent being regenerated by land vegetation.

Again, the satellites will provide the answer. By a systematic study, over several years, of the shelf-pollution pattern caused by the Earth's rivers, they Can provide a data base on which corrective action could be taken. In many cases the river cleanup measures ordered by national or regional environmental protection agencies may prove to have been adequate or could be tightened sufficiently for restoring a shelf's ecological health. In more difficult cases, massive engineering projects can be initiated to virtually channel, or pipe, the poisoned river waters across the continental shelves to the near-barren deepwater ocean areas.

Even the open oceans can be held under continuous scrutiny. Whenever a tanker captain in 2025 thinks that he can get away with cleaning his bilges or bunker spaces on the high seas under protection of night, the satellites, detecting both the telltale oil slick and the ship steaming away from the scene, would quickly report the misdeed to the U.N. pollution-control branch, and the shipping company could expect to be fined for violation of worldwide treaties on environmental protection.

Atmospheric pollution could also be a subject of continuous monitoring by the ever-watchful eyes in the sky.. The worldwide machinery of environmental protection would be promptly notified whenever

pollution levels dangerous to human health were approached.

Thus, the years between 1975 and 2025 may give us what Spaceship Earth needs most: a capability of doing some sound "planetary systems engineering." These 50 years will provide us for the first time with a planetary data bank, and the orbitcollected data stored in this bank will provide the basis for at least some rudimentary "planetary systems management."

Will the "planetary systems management" of 2025 be tantamount to "world government?" Not necessarily. Many people today are concerned that the seemingly unavoidable controls for protecting our environment, or for preserving our nonrenewable resources, will inescapably lead us more and more into a world resembling Orwell's 1984, with Big Brother watching our every move. I do not think it needs to be quite that bad. Man has accomplished some pretty remarkable things on a global basis without putting us in a strait jacket.

Take the control of epidemics. In the Middle Ages, the bubonic plague depopulated vast areas. Even a few decades ago, typhoid, yellow fever, malaria, and diphtheria were still major hazards to foreign travel. The international medical community, in close co-operation with governments, has quietly managed to establish a worldwide health-control system that checks the spread of epidemics very effectively while it causes a minimum of inconvenience to international travelers.

Those who fail to get the proper inoculation may wind up in quarantine quarters for a few days. A similar fate may befall our future tanker captain who cleans his bilge at midnight.

The upshot: Some more common-sense restraint on the part of everybody will be necessary if our planet is to remain a suitable habitat for Homo sapiens. But Orwell's 1984 in 2025? No. In the communications field, satellites will bring about another revolution. After the Intelsat communications satellites of the 1960s and '70s have established a global telephone network interconnecting nearly 100 nations, satellites will take over a major share of domestic communications as well. In addition to telephone conversations, they can carry television programs and facsimile service and provide direct ties between computers in different locations in support of such operations as

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People with artificial device developed from enables them to move by delicate movements

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Scientist studies colo/ slides, taken from NASA's Earth Resources Survey Satellite, of California's Imperial Valley. Such photos are helping U.S. farmers identify infestations.

banking or ticket reservations. Soon, lasers, operating at visible and infrared wavelengths (where spectrum space is almost unlimited), will make their entry into the communications satellite field. Nuclear lasers in geosynchronous orbits37,000 kilometers up-will be the next major breakthrough. They could provide the capability to handle millions of television channels simultaneously and billions of telephone conversations.

Controlled by an orbital switchboard, laser beam connections could be established (and withdrawn after use) that provide direct links between any two points on Earth. The abundance of available channels would soon lead to worldwide video-telephone service. And as communications improve, commuting for business purposes would go out of style. It would become more convenient to let electrons, rather than people, do the traveling. Traffic and parking problems have kept people off the streets even for local

3S

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Launched last year, this appli'dztions communications spacecraft, AMSAT-Oscar 7, is for noncommercial and educational use by the amateur radio community throughout the world.

This girl can see better becaus{ of a new device attached to her spectacles which directs light beams into her eyes. The device was originally developed for use by American astronauts.

Four-year-old Jennifer's play is interrupted as her mother recharges her implanted pacemaker-from outside the body. A pacemaker like Jennifer's can be usedfor up to 20 years and

eliminates the need for a battery-replacement operation every two years. The pacemaker was developed at Johns Hopkins University from components designed for use in spacecraft.

chores. But the average American household of 2025 will be equipped with an appliance that combines the features of a television set with those of a desk computer and a Xerox machine. In addition to serving as a TV set and a printout device for news, the push-button-controlled con- sole will permit its owner to receive facsimile-radioed letters, review the shelves of a nearby grocery store, order food and dry goods, pay bills, balance books, and provide color-video telephone service to any point on Earth.

Zero-gravity manufacturing and processing experiments conducted in 1973 and 1974 in Skylab, America's first manned space station, will open up a new industry in space. Ultra-pure vaccines, growth of huge crystals for solid-state devices required by the electronics industry, manufacture of metal alloys that could not be created at all under normal gravity,conditions (where the heavy components of the melt would sink to the bottom while the

light ones rose to the top) will be produced in orbit. By 2025 the value of these orbital products will have risen to several billion dollars per year, a handsome payoff indeed for the costly Skylab experiments.

Coming generations of our global system of meteorological satellites, equipped with greatly improved instruments, will provide the entire world with all the data needed for a reliable two-week weather forecast. This data will be fed into computers on the ground that have stored in memory banks the detailed information that will permit making an extremely elaborate model of the weather.

This system already saves thousands of lives and millions of dollars in property damage every year by timely warning of approaching hurricanes, tornadoes, and tidal waves. As the meteorological system improves, these savings will grow, too.

The economic savings to agriculture, construction, transportation, and many other industries now subject to the vagaries of

the weather should indeed be enormous.

It is also safe to predict that some degree of weather control will be achieved. Think of the implications of having rainfall occur only at night, or, more important in terms of meeting the world's need for food, of being able to bring rainfall at will to areas now parched and wracked by drought.

Many of the U.S. space operations in 2025 will become possible through the advent of the reusable space shuttle, which will see its first use in approximately 1979. The shuttle will not only drastically reduce the cost of space transportation but also will open up space for the nonastronaut. Surely, there will still be astronauts on the flight deck of the advanced space shuttle of 2025, but their role can be compared with that of the flight crew in an airliner. The passengers will be astronomers, meteorologists, environmentalists, climatologists, geologists, oil prospectors, and other Earth-resources experts. For them space flight will become the old airline routine of "coffee, tea, or milk?"

With the help of the space shuttle, the United States will also resume flights to the Moon. Apollo 17, launched in December 1972, brought to a close a string of fabulously successful expeditionary ventures to our nearest neighbor in space.

For all of its great scientific returns, however, the Apollo transportation system had the inherent limitations of all great firsts.

For exploring the Moon thoroughly, longer "stay times" on the lunar surface and the capability of covering greater distances on the ground are vitally necessary. The shuttle, supported by a breed of equally reusable, nonstreamlined vehicles known as "space tugs," can transport substantially larger useful loads to the lunar surface and do this at greatly reduced cost.

This breakthrough in lunar logistics will make possible the establishment and support of a permanent research station on the Moon, operated on the principles of our older research stations in the Antarctic.

Around the year 2000 this station will be the site of a milestone event in human history: the birth of the first lunar baby.

By 2025 man will also have set foot on the planet Mars. Will he find life? Here again my crystal ball gets clouded. (There would be no fun in science and exploration if everything could be predicted. We can only speculate that we might find at least some lower forms of life there.)

Many of the things I have discussed here are already well on their way to fruition. Others may be a bit on the speculative side. All I have really done is enumerate our options and alternatives.

0

IS 'THE BEST' THE WORST? What's the world's best train ride? The best pain-killing drug? The best movie critic?

The best New York club? The best undiscovered hotel in Rome? The best summation of Oxford philosophy? The best fighter aircraft? The best con game? The best airline food?

The best living theoretical physicist? The best private jet plane under a million dollars?

The best cigar? The best diet?

The best way to become very rich? The best "patriotic prepschool pedantic poem?"

The answers to these and hundreds of other questions are found in a book many Americans are talking about. It's called The Best and its publishers label it a "Guide to the World's Number' One Things." Self-proclaimed "know-it-alls of what's best in life," the authors are Leonard Ross, who won $100,000 in a quiz show at the age of 10, and Peter Passell who has a Ph.D. in economics. Many Americans are paying $5.95 for this book.

They find it's a mixture of information, wit and idiosyncracy, presented with a cockiness at once amusing and infuriating.

One sample: About "the best strategy for investing in the

stock market," which Ross and Passell themselves consider one of "the best of The Best," the book says: "A broker can't help ....

If he knew something, why would he give it away for a lousy $60 commission?"

Its advice: Look for solid companies in industries that seem fairly safe. "Then buy when the price-earnings ratios seem unreasonably low and sell when the price-earnings ratios seem unreasonably high."

One of the memorable items in the book is the authors' selection of "the best-defined job in government""Administrative Assistant to the Assistant Administrator for Administration, in the U.S. Agency for International Development." The "best put-down of a critic" is also eminently quotable-"I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."

But the book is not all frivolity. It does want to be taken seriously, and does impart a lot of information.

Sometimes Ross and Passell are quite scientific-as when they discuss "the best door-lock," "the best shotgun" and "the best theory of the origin of the universe." The joke of the book

is to pretend that there is a "best" available in everything; and proceed poker-faced from matters of technology to matters of taste to sheer buffoonery.

The harshest critic of the book is Rhoda Koenig of Harper's Magazine, who finds it "one more rancid little example of the nonbook."

She accuses it of selling chic and one-upmanship and instant expertise." It may be useful to those "customers" who want to "impress some fool at a cocktail party." She concludes that the authors have omitted one entry: the best phrase to describe The Best-"The worst."

But many critics feel that Rhoda Koenig has overreacted to a book that's mainly meant to entertain, despite its facade of omniscience and sophistication.

Those who have read The Best recommend it as a lightweight, lighthearted book that can be read with pleasure on a vacation. And it is, in fact, "the best book" for that purpose.

MGM'S GOLDEN YEARS "Do it big, do it right, give it class," used to be the motto of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its years of glory, and it inspired some of the most lavish and lovable musicals in film history.

MGM is no longer a major moviemaker, but millions of Americans are talking about the "golden years of MGM" when it boasted of "more stars than there are in the heavens." This wave of nostalgia has been set off by That's Entertainment, a montage of musical moments from nearly 100 MGM films made between 1929 and 1958.

Some consider the film-MGM's tribute to itself on its 50th birthday-the most enjoyable

cinema anthology ever.

"You can wait around and hope, but you'll never see the likes of this again," says Frank Sinatra, one of the movie's narrators. There are 10 others, including Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Bing Crosby. They are variously gay, funny, maudlin-but never dull.

Nor is Jack Haley, Jr., who lovingly wrote, directed and produced the movie.

That's Entertainment is a treasury of everyone's favorite scenes-a "regally wet" Esther Williams diving from trapezes through multicolored smoke. clouds in Million Dollar Mermaid; Gene Kelley's puddlestomping serenade in Singin' in the Rain; a spiraling staircase dripping with singers, dancers and girls in The Great Ziegfeld; the beautiful Lena Horne singing "Honeysuckle Rose" in Thousands Cheer; Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling in Royal Wedding; an ingenuous Judy Garland singing her love before.. a picture of Clark Gable in

Broadway Melody of 1938.

Several scenes capture the period between the mid-'40s and the mid-'50s, the zenith of MGM's grandeur-"scenes like jewels tumbling off a conveyor belt," as the New Yorker puts it.

The film isn't particular about chronological sequence. It draws almost at random from a "cultural memory bank," and that adds to its appeal.

That's Entertainment is a world of clowning and love and fantasy, of crashes that cause no wound, of water that doesn't wet, of enemies who harbor no malice, of actors who sing and dance, of legions of "special effects" technicians creating awesome spectacles that would be impossibly expensive today. It's almost

~ERICANS ~RETALKING ~BOUli a history of the American musical, and therefore rich "meat" for students of cinema and thesis-writers. It's a jamboree of wit and high spirits that has delighted grownups who know MGM's fabulous past-and surprised kids who don't.

NEW FRUGALITY AND GARBAGE POWER Inflation and the Middle East crisis are still big topics of conversation in the United States today, but so is the "new frugality." Pundits call it many things-the end of the throwaway age, the era of recycling, the new thrift ethic. But it all comes down to the same thing: Americans realize that with only 6 per cent of the world's population they are consuming nearly 35 per cent of all the energy and minerals produced on Earth each year, and this has got to stop. It is unfair, and they must change their habits.

Americans are changingespecially young adults-and the changes are radical.

What are some of the new attitudes-and the ones they're rejecting? They're rejecting the "Keep up with the Joneses" ethic; the deliberate engineering of many products for a limited life span (planned obsolescence);

the assumption that every family must have two huge cars. And

they"re rejecting synthetic fibers, which are made from petrochemicals and hence are a drain on the world's scarce oil supply. They are changing their eating habits. Many young adults are forgoing meat more often-not for religious or health reasons but simply because they realize the amount of grain it takes to fatten livestock is wasteful.

Many of the above are still only "trends" and it may take more than a few years until they become woven into a new national lifestyle. But many concrete actions are being taken to curb waste in America. One of the most promising is using garbage instead of coal and oil to fuel power plants.

American cities ha ve discovered that 70 to 80 per cent of the garbage they collect is paper, wood, cardboard, plastic, food scraps and other combustible material. Result: They're selling their garbage to electric companies to burn in their power plants. Some 25 U.S. cities are now in the garbageburning business.

Garbage sorters in these cities are also removing noncombustibles like metals and'selling them. Manufacturers are paying $30 to $60 per ton for scrap

steel and $300 per ton for scrap aluminum. The metals are being recycled to make new products.

Experts calculate that widespread use of garbage combustibles as fuel for power plants could reduce U.S. use of petroleum by as much as seven per cent a year.

Burning garbage for fuel is undoubtedly an innovation, but are the so-called "new attitudes" really new? U.S. News and World Report magazine reminds Americans that the era of "wasteful prosperity" is only three decades old, a result of the unprecedented U.S. prosperity after World War II. It points out that in the 19th century and well into the 20th, Americans were brought up on the proverb, "Waste not, want not," and that frugality is as American as apple pie. "When the new era comes," they say, "it will seem like old times revisited for the millions of Americans who were reared to abhor waste."

In short: Pass the apple pie.

GOING BACK TO THE MIDDLE AGES At Lindisfarne, on New York's Long Island, 25 resident intellectuals practice contemplation, grow their own food, and theorize about a culture that will synthesize "magic and technology, myth and history."

Miles away, in the Arizona desert, a self-contained town for 3,000 is being built by the visionary architect Paolo Soleri.

Both projects are manifestations of the same new American phenomenon: an explosion of interest in the Middle Ages.

Other signs of the NeoMedievalist Movement: The University of Chicago recently held a month-long "Celebration

of the Medieval Heritage" featuring dramas spoken in Latin and Anglo-Norman French. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, an exhibition of medieval tapestries drew one' of the biggest crowds ever. In the past decade, the Medieval Academy of America has doubled its membership to 3,600, and the number of academic centers devoted to medieval studies has jumped from 9 to 66.

What's behind it all? Why this sudden hankering after a way of life long past? Seeing the trend as a recurring phenomenon, Time magazine says: "At least once each century scholars and other dreamers look back to the Middle Ages in the h-ope of recovering some sense of what life was like before the rise of modern science, industry, skepticism and alienation."

Communications theorist Marshall McLuhan feels that the world is already "more medieval than the Middle Ages" which, he . ~ says, was also "an acoustic era when everything was bells, music, preaching and sound." The printed word dominated the period that followed. "But today," McLuhan says, "through radio, telephone and television, we have recreated the acoustic conditions of medieval societyonly a hundred times better."

As scholars delve more deeply into the Middle Ages, they're unearthing some interesting facts-for instance, that parliamentary government, the jury system and the university all began during this period.

Critics of neo-medievalism say it's just a passing fad. But at least it provides a respectable avenue of escape to those dissatisfied with the present.

All they have to do is step back 500 years.

R.K.N

YAN:

A WRITER IMMERSED IN IDS MATERIAL

The autobiography of a writer of fiction is generally superfluous, since he has already, in rearrangement and disguise, written out the material of his life many times. A novel like The Man-Eater of Malgudi, though its hero, Nataraj, and its author, Narayan, are not to be confused, tells us more about the India that R.K. Narayan inhabits, and more explicitly animates his opinion of what he sees, than his recent brief memoir, My Days (Viking).

Not that Mr. Narayan's mischievous modesty does not lend an agreeable tone to this account of his rather uneventful life.

Nor are his delightful gifts of caricature entirely inhibited by factuality. In My Days, as in his novels, one meets men so absorbed in self-interest that they become grotesque and wonderful: the young Narayan, seeking employment, grooms himself smartly to meet a prospective employer, who comes onto his veranda "bare-bodied and glisten(ing) with an oil-coating, as he prepared himself for a massage; he blinked several times to make me out, as oil had In this elegant and incisive dripped over his eyes and blurred his review of R.K. Narayan's vision.... All my best efforts at grooming autobiography, a famous were wasted, for I must have looked to him like a photograph taken with a shiver- American novelist praises ing hand." The man barks a rebuff of the his 'gifts of caricature' and boy, and then paces "like a greasy bear in his 'sense of community.' its cage." This sense of imprisonment within character, of each person energetically if ruinously fulfiIling his dharma-his vo- creators fatalistically look into men for a cation, a Christian might say-reached its fixed posture, an irrevocable passion. peak in English fiction with Dickens, and Narayan tells us that one of his uncles perhaps requires a religious basis. In the served as "an inescapable model for meliberal view, character is sigqificantly mal- his approach to other human beings, his leable, whereas the-traditional characteraggressive talk wherever he went, his dash

byJohn Updike

and recklessness ... his abandon to alcohol in every form all through the day.

(I portrayed him as Kailas, in The Bachelor of Arts, and he provided all the substance whenever I had to portray a drunken character.)" Few writers since Dickens can match the effect of colorful teeming that Narayan's fictional city of Malgudi conveys; its population is as sharply chiseled as a temple frieze, and as endless, with always, one feels, more characters around the corner.

Yet the creator's life, as described in My Days, begins in loneliness. A little boy living with his grandmother and uncle, he has only pets for company, and the pets all die. He goes to school, and hates it. " "On the first day I wept in fear. The sight of my classmates shook my nerves." He cannot shape clay, and his slate is always smudged. Throughout his schooling, though he toughens into an athletic boy of the streets, he remains difficult, intractable, uninspired. "I was opposed to the system of being prescribed a set of books by an anonymous soulless body of textbookprescribers, and of being stamped good or bad as a result of such studies .... I liked to be free to read what I pleased and not be examined at alL" Taking his university entrance examinations, he flunks English -his best subject. And in the idle year this gives him he begins to discover his own dharma-the vocation of a writer.

An aspect of this vocation, one feels after reading Mr. Narayan's fascinating middle chapters, is to have no other. His interviews for employment in business are humorous disasters; his enrollment as a

teacher in the school where his father had been headmaster, a plausible route to respectability, is sabotaged by Narayan himself, with the manic pugnacity of one of his own characters. His chapter describing the regimented foolishness of schoolteaching and his repeated escape from it approaches vehemence; the chapters following drop in emotional temperature, and trace a slow climb to success, contentment already achieved.

That settled it. After the final and irrevocable stand I took [not to be a teacher], I felt lighter and happier. I did not encourage anyone to comment on my deed or involve myself in any discussion.

I sensed that I was respected for it. At least there was an appreciation of the fact that I knew my mind. I went through my day in a businesslike manner, with a serious face. Soon after my morning coffee and bath I took my umbrella and started out for a walk. I needed the umbrella to protect my head from the sun. Sometimes I carried a pen and pad and sat down under the shade of a tree at the foot of Chamundi Hill and wrote. Some days I took out a cycle and rode ten miles along the Karapur Forest Road, sa t on a wayside culvert, and wrote or brooded over life and literature, watching some peasant ploughing his field, with a canal flowing glitteringly in the sun. My needs were nil, I did not have plans, there was a delight in being just alive and free from employment.

It speaks well I think, of the Indian society of the early '30s that itallowed, after due resistance, this prospectless young man's rebellion against gainful employment; a contemporaneous American family might have driven such a child to France, or into bohemia-altogether out, in any case, of the home environment that has continuously nurtured Narayan's creativity. Madras, where he was raised, and Mysore, where he came to live, spontaneously fostered a fictional city: "On a certain day in September, selected by my grandmother for its auspiciousness, I bought an exercise book and wrote the first line of a novel; as I sat in a room nibbling my pen and wondering what to write, Malgudi with its little railway station swam into view, all ready-made." This novel, under the title of Swami and Friends, was finally published in England.

The literary London of Shaw and Wells, Conan Doyle and Wodehouse, the Strand and the Mercury had been brought, via magazines subscribed to by his father's school, into the center of Narayan's boyhood, and colonial India abounded in English-language journalism, though of a threadbare sort. (This reviewer once had the opportunity to ask Mr. Narayan if present, nationalist India, which has discouraged the teaching of English, ~ould produce any more masters of the language

like himself; his answer was affable but not affirmative.) In his first year of freelance writing, Narayan earned nine rupees and twelve annas (about a dollar and a quarter); the second year, a short story sold for 18 rupees; the third, a children's tale brought 30. He labored as the Mysore correspondent for the Madras Justice; Graham Greene became his champion in England, and found a fresh publisher for each of his first four novels, which were merely critical successes. The author married, and his beloved wife's sudden death from typhoid, and his own slow recovery from sorrow via psychic communication with her, form the only significantly adverse incident in his gradual progress from journalistic piecework to international distinction, movie deals, and -crown of crowns-a travel grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. In prosperity and fame, his imagination seems to work as fluently as when Malgudi with its railway station swam into view: "During my travels in America, the idea [of The Guide] crystallized in my mind. I stopped in Berkeley for three months, took a hotel room, and wrote my novel."

Narayan's few revelations about his practice of writing heighten the value of this memoir. His desire to write in English was born of an early infatuation with English novels, beginning with Scott and Dickens ("I ... loved his London and the queer personalities therein") and going on to the romanticism of Rider Haggard and Marie Corelli and Mrs. Henry Wood ("I looked for books that would leave me crushed at the end"). When he turned from mystical poems to his first novel, he let the incidents invent themselves: "Each day as I sat down to write, I had no notion of what would be corning. All that I could be certain of was the central character."

The tale-teller, that is, is nearer the talehearer, in his openness to surprise, than college instructors of plot mechanics may know. "The pure delight of watching a novel grow can never be duplicated by any other experience." But Narayan's fertility would be tedious without his control and economy; he goes on to describe how his days of pure delight were followed by nights of "corrections, revisions, and tightening up of sentences" so that a "real, final version could emerge ... between the original lines and then again in what developed in the jumble of rewritten lines."

His one confessed doctrinal resolve, as he set out, was "to see if other subjects than love ... could be written about. I wished to attack the tyranny of Love and see if Life could offer other values than the

inevitable Man-Woman relationship to a writer." The predominantly masculine interplay of Narayan's novels develops, one feels, from street life, from the skein of casual and passing conversation that he alludes to lovingly more than once. His journalistic news-gathering no doubt reinforced his habit of sociable curiosity, but the impulse perhaps dates back to the time when, the only child in his grandmother's house, he found it "exciting, one day, to be asked to go with my uncle to the street of shops." His days as a writer sometimes began with a walk: All morning I wandered. At every turn I found a character fit to go into a story. While walking, ideas were conceived and developed, or sometimes lost through the interludes on the way. One could not traverse the main artery of Mysore, Sayyaji Rao Road, without stopping every few steps to talk to a friend. Mysore is not only reminiscent of an old Greek city in its physical features, but the habits of its citizens are also very Hellenic. Vital issues, including philosophical and political analyses, were examined and settled by people (at least in those days) 01} the promenades of Mysore.

Narayan is one of a vanishing breedthe writer as citizen. His citizenship extends to calling up municipal officials about inadequate street lighting, to "dashing off virulent letters to newspapers about corruption and inefficiency." Such protests do not feel, as with so much American social consciousness, forced-a covert bid for power and self-justification. "If I have to worry, it's about things outside me, mostly not concerning me." What a wealth of material becomes accessible to a writer who can so simply assert such a sense of community! We have writers willing to be mayor but not many excited to be citizens.

We have writers as confessors, shackled to their personal lives, and writers as researchers, hanging their sheets of information from a bloodless story line.

But of writers immersed in their material, and enabled to draw tales from a community of neighbors, Faulkner was our last great example. An instinctive, respectful identification with the people of one's locale comes hard now, in the menacing cities or disposable suburbs, yet without it a genuine belief in the significance of humanity, in humane significances, comes not at all.

0 About the Author: John Updike is one of the most distinguished figures in contemporary American letters. A prolific writer and winner of the National Book Award, he is best known for his subtle, minutely detailed novels. Among his books are The Carpentered Hen; Rabbit Redux: Couples; and Museums and Women.

A DAYWITH

RK.NARAYAN India's most internationally famous novelist vigorously shuns personal publicity. But in this rare interview with an old friend, Narayan talks at length about his impressions of America, about the travail of writing, the future of fiction-and about fellow novelist John Updike.

R.K. Narayan, probably the most widely read and certainly the best loved Indian (or for that matter, Commonwealth) novelist writing in English today, is a serene, gentle, courteous and unpretentious man who resists being interviewed with unwonted belligerence. Toward this one essential of the media-dominated world he displays what John Updike has described very neatly as "the manic pugnacity of one of his own characters." The requests for interview, in person and by mail, are myriad. He handles the letters asking questions, demanding information and soliciting unpaid articles easily enough-he simply throws them away. It is a little more difficult for him to avoid the persistent seeker of personal interviews, but he manages all right by moving with admirable rapidity from Mysore, which is his home, to Coimbatore, where his only child-a daughter-lives, or to Bangalore, where he has close friends, dr, in an absolute extremity, to Delhi or to the United States, thereby thoroughly flummoxing the seeker of information.

In a man well-known to be gregarious to the point of accepting invitations from total strangers to visit them-whenever he is in the United States Narayan spends several man-hours trying to locate the apartments of people he has impulsively agreed to call on simply because they seemed nice or interesting-such intransigence toward being interviewed might seem uncharacteristic.

Actually, it is very much in character. The fact is that while Narayan genuinely enjoys people and derives emotional and artistic sustenance from his contacts, he has an overwhelming reluctance to talk about himself.

This reluctance is compounded of many factors':":"'anatural reticence about all aspects of his private life that have no bearing on his public persona, a truly honest conviction that whatever he has to say he has already put into his books, an innate distaste for publicity, and a genuine desire not to seem aggrandizing from his position of vantage. "I really have nothing to say," says he disarmingly if one succeeds in pinning him down. The statement is not true, of course, but its gentle finality is unassailable and leaves little room for negotiation or maneuvering.

When therefore Narayan recently agreed, at my importunity, to discuss his current preoccupations with me and asked me to spend a day with him in Coimbatore for the purpose, I quite correctly interpreted the invitation as more a recognition of a friendship of nearly two decades than a sudden abandonment of principle. He had said to lI\e in his customary affable fashion: "Let us talk of this and that and you make what you like of it."

We did precisely that, and what follows is a highly condensed

report, wherever possible in Narayan's own words, of what I made of the very pleasant hours I spent with him on a balmy winter day.

Upon arrival at Coimbatore I took a taxi to the hotel where Narayan had recommended I stay, and telephoned him immediately. He was expecting me and he gave very clear directions about how to find his house, hardly a five-minute walk from the hotel. Lacking even a basic sense of direction, I promptly lost my way.

He was waiting for me at the gate of the large rambling house in which his daughter, her husband and the rest of their family live when, somewhat in the manner in which he finds addresses in New York or San Francisco, I stumbled on it after taking three or four wrong turns. Narayan was a trifle puzzled to see me approaching from a direction precisely the opposite of the one from which he was expecting me, and when the reason for this had been explained to his satisfaction we went into the house and sat down in the spacious, cool living room.

Though I had not known it, I was calling on him at a particularly relaxed time for him. His autobiography, My Days, ~ had just recently been published in the United States and had been very well received [see John Updike's review on page 38].

He had finished his latest novel and mailed it to his publishers.

"They have just cabled me to say that they have received the manuscript and that they are very pleased with it," he said. "It is a great relief. Whatever the joys of creation might be, it is really a nuisance writing a novel! It ties you down so completely for a year or two. This one took a whole year. And you are never quite sure how it will be received. Now my daughter here does not care for the hero of this new novel, and I am very glad she is not my publisher.

"What is it about? Well, the hero is a sign painter, a complicated chap who talks audibly and inaudibly at the same time.

He is an idealist and a lot of things go on in his mind. Of course the story is set in Malgudi, but it is a pretty changed Malgudi.

Progress has caught up wjth it. The year is 1972, and a family planning center has been opened. My hero, who goes to paint a sign for the center, falls passionately in love with the young woman in charge. But her one passion is birth control and she lectures men and women quite explicitly on the subject, using charts and blackboards and whatnot. You know, I think some of my regular readers might be a bit dismayed by some of the biological references but then you can't very well write about birth control without some mention of sex, can you?"

--

\J'WIIVVYt

Young Americans are 'very earnest, very sharp and precise in mind,' says Narayan.

He enjoys being with them, has persuaded several to visit India to study Sanskrit and Indology.

In an early novel, The Dark Room (one of the finest and for some odd reason least noticed of his works), Narayan had portrayed an unforgettable picture of the long-suffering Hindu wife.

I mentioned the book and said that the heroine of his present novel seemed a far cry from Savitri of The Dark Room. Narayan agreed. "In The Dark Room I was concerned with showing the utter dependence of woman on man in our society. I suppose I have moved along with the times. This girl in my new novel is quite different. Not only is she not dependent on men, she actually has no use for them as an integral part of her life. To show her complete independence and ability to stand by herself I took care not to give her a name with any kind of emotional connotation."

(Savitri in the earlier novel is of course named after the mythical wife to whom husband is god.) "I am calling her simply Daisy.

She is a very strong character. All the same, when you read the novel you will find she is very feminine also. There is a conflict.

That is the whole point."

Later he let me read the novel-to which he had not yet given a title-in manuscript, and it is as 'good as anything he has written with the possible exception of The English Teacher and The Guide. More a long short story than a conventional novel, it is beautifully realized and the characters are vintage Narayan.

The family planning motif provides a lot of scope for Narayan's special kind of gentle and unforced humor, but the real theme, as always)n Narayan, is human relationships. In this case, the relationship between a man and a woman who want and need each other, but the commitment of one of them stands in the way of their fully coming together. It is a strong story, though written with light and deft touches ..

We had lunch and moved upstairs to another large, cool room.

Narayan adjusted his chair so that he would be spared the glare from the bright, afternoon sun. He has had a major eye operation, a traumatic experience which nevertheless provided him with the materials for a hilarious story, "A Breath of Lucifer." He is philosophical about physical debilitations-"nature's way of warning you to slow down, you know, it just pulls off a few fuses" -and quite sensibly takes good care of himself.

When we were settled down Narayan continued to talk about the travail of writing. He had had difficulty in the early days finding a publisher until Graham Greene became his champion, and persuaded one leading British publisher after another to bring out his first four novels. In the United States Narayan was first published by one of the university presses, and later the Viking Press took him over as one of their authors. "I have a contract with Viking and this is the last novel I owe them. What a time-consuming business writing a novel is!" he said again. "I am tempted to make my next contracts for collections of short stories, say four or five at a time, each of about 20,000 words or so. Then I will be rid of this tyranny. In fact, you know I think I shall give up writing novels altogether." I laughed and he also laughed, obviously feeling all the better for getting the heretical thought off his chest.

Narayan's novels have been translated into several languages, including Russian, Polish and Hebrew. Though he had his first critical successes in England, he now has a far greater following in the United States. He feels that American critics have generally been perceptive about him though tending to see different merits in his work. (I was reminded of his saying expansively to Ved

Mehta: "Like true reality, I am many things to many men.")

He was particularly pleased by John Updike's recent review of his autobiography in the New Yorker. "I thought it one of the best things written about me. Or for that matter about the writer's vocation. I was particularly interested by the point Updike makes about the writer as citizen since I feel exactly the same way. It made me feel good to know that Updike understands my involvement with people-as individuals and as a community."

Had he read any of Updike's works himself? Had they by any chance met? He said yes to both questions. "I haven't read much Updike. In fact I think I have read only Rabbit Redux. He is a wonderful observer of human nature, and his presentation of human types is really quite extraordinary. He also has so much compassion. And he writes beautifully, though I must say that I find all that open sex quite shocking. We met during the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1974 to which we were both delegates. There was an enormous audience for his lecture-people probably expected him to talk along the lines of his books. But he gave a very serious and interesting talk on the novelist's craft." "I think many people in the audience were quite disappointed," he added gleefully.

He thought for a bit. "Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I don't think all this coarseness serves any artistic purpose. It is a pity that even good writers seem to exploit the pornographic opportunities in their writing. But," he brightened, "things have a habit of coming full cycle. People started out by writing romances, about courtly love and so on, and gradually they have come down to writing about physical sex, nymphets and perversions and all that sort of thing. I am sure fiction will soon start going back to the original lofty notions of romance, to the dignity of the manwoman relationship." I found the statement somewhat optimistic but did not say so because the thought of the novel returning to the theme of romantic love obviously pleased him quite a bit.

Narayan first went to the United States in 1956 and has since~ then paid at least one annual visit to that country. I had always wondered why he has never written any fiction with Americans as the principal characters, or even with an American background.

The only exception I can think of is a delightfully farcical story entitled, "A Horse and Two Goats," which should serve as some sort of a last word on intercultural communication. This is the story in which an American tries to buy a clay statue of a horse from a goatherd who is sitting on its pedestal, under the impression that the goatherd owns it. The goatherd promptly concludes that the American is bidding for his two goats. Narayan also once had a nebulous idea for a short story involving an Indian professor trying to settle down in an apartment in an American city and having a lot of trouble with the labor-saving devices and gadgets. The professor takes in for assistance an American girl who is writing a thesis on him, and who, in return for her domestic help, expects the professor to provide academic guidance. Unfortunately, nothing came of this fleeting figment of Narayan's subjective imagination.

Narayan's explanation for not writing about Americans or America was simple and reasonable. "I must be absolutely certain about the psychology of the character I am writing about, and I must be equally sure of the background. I know the Tamil and Kannada speaking people best. I know their background. I know how their minds work, and, almost as if it is happening to me, I

know exactly what will happen to them in certain situations and under certain circumstances. And I know how they will react. I do not feel I have this kind of knowledge about Americans or America in spite of the time I have spent in that country. And anyway, there is so much to write about right here in India. There is so much diversity and individuality that almost anyone I meet provides me with material for a story or a novel."

Many of his stories indeed are at least partly based on personal experience or observation, and some of them, like "Annamalai," are semidocumentaries.

In passing, he explained that "A Horse and Two Goats" was also inspired by a real incident, when a foreign diplomat came to visit him in Mys?re "with an enormous clay horse squeezed into the back of his station-wagon.

It occupied so much space that the official's entire family had to crowd themselves into the front seat."

"The United States has changed a great deal since I first visited there," he continued. "I am sure many of the changes arc for the better, but I miss the old peaceful days, and I do not always feel the kind of security I used to. One of the things I enjoyed doing most in New York was to go around the bookstores on Times Square at night, and I don't do this any more. Apart from seeing old friends, what I find particularly stimulating these days is visiting university campuses. Of course I make fun of the American passion for seeking and absorbing esoteric information"notably in his "Reluctant Guru," an account of his experiences as a Visiting Professor in a mid-Western university"but the American young people are really very earnest, very sharp and precise in mind. Academic life continues to be the same. The young people today may have radical attitudes and informal ways, but they are intellectually no different from the ones I first met in 1956. I always enjoy being with them, and I have persuaded several to come to India, specifically to Mysore, to study Sanskrit and what my academic friends call Indology generally."

The feeling is reciprocal, and Narayan is popular and very much at home on American campuses. In addition to his novels, his retelling of stories from the Indian epics: and his version of the Ramayana, sell well in campus bookstores. One of his new projects is to write a version of the Mahabharata, eliminating all the incidental episodes but maintaining the principal story line,

Probably the best known Indian novelist in America, R.K. Narayan was first introduced to the U.S. by the Michigan State University Press. During 1953-54 the Press published five of his novels, all of which were extremely well received by the critics. In 1956, Narayan accepted an invitation from die Rockefeller Foundation to visit the United States. It was not only his first visit to that country, but his first trip outside India. He spent the winter of 1956 and most of the following spring in America, meeting everybody from Aldous Huxley to Greta Garbo. He stayed in Berkeley for about three months, and did most of his writing on The Guide there. The impressions of the trip itselfhe recorded in a book titled My Dateless Diary. The Guide, published by the Viking Press in 1958, was a popular success-it was made into a film and a play and won the Sahitya Akademi award. Narayan has subsequently visited the United States a number of times. In 1958, he was a visiting lecturer at Michigan State University; he has also lectured at such institutions as the University of California at Berkeley, Kansas State University, Yale Uni,,:ersity and Vassar College.

At least 10 of his books are now in print in the U.S.

and presenting the epic as an illustration of the conflict between good and evil. If Narayan's narrative powers owe something to his familiarity with traditional Indian story-telling, the universal significance he sees in many of the Indian myths gives strength and substance to his plots and characters. Narayan's own exercise in modern myth-making, namely the portrait of Gandhiji in Waiting for the Mahatma, makes a special appeal to his American audience, and a new paperback American edition of the book is scheduled to come out shortly. It will carry as introduction a long piece on Gandhiji.

Hema, Narayan's daughter, brought in coffee. A true Narayan afficionado knows that proper coffee-making is to Narayan a mystic ritual on par with the Japanese tea ceremony, and he looked at me anxiously as I drank it from a silver tumbler, an essential appurtenance if the coffee is to taste the way it should.

My expression obviously assured him that the coffee had measured up to the exacting standards he maintains and which he courteoLlsly vested me with also.

It was time for me to leave and I realized that I had not yet asked Narayan about the National Convention of Authors, sponsored by the Authors' Guild of India, held in Delhi in late December 1974, and over which he presided. "I am not very fond of participating in affairs of this kind but I felt lowed it to my fellow-writers," he said, giving substance to the phrase, 'the writer as citizen.' He continued: "I think this was the first time a convention like this was held in India, which discussed the bread and butter matters that concern authors. Such things as protection of copyright, equitable publishers' contracts, sales promotion and so on. In my talk I pointed out that there is a large audience for books in our country, and I stressed the role of the publisher in intelligently gauging the needs of this audience and fulfilling them. I should like the publisher to think of himself as a participant in the cultural endeavors of his fellow men. Our publishers will have to work out a well-defined editorial policy which should have roots in the cultural soil of our country and bear relevance to our conditions. I also appealed to our publishers to adopt businesslike methods, and deal with authors fairly."

Narayan himself has had no problems with publishers, U.S., British, Russian or Polish, to all of whom he gives high praise for the fair and honorable deal they have always given him. In the United States, Viking has been his publisher for several years now. His contract with them expired with the novel he just sent them, and he could go to a different publisher if he wanted to.

But he thinks he will stay with Viking and write a fresh contract with them as he has been pleased with the way they have treated him. In India Narayan has his own publishing house and so does not face some of the problems other authors might. He has reached best-seller status here. All his books are continually in print, and one of them, The Guide, has sold over a lakh of copies.

I rose to go and Narayan decided to walk me to my hotel, as much out of courtesy as, I suspect, out of the fear that I might get lost again. The next morning on my way to the airport I stopped by at his house to say goodbye. We had been chatting for a few minutes when his young grandson burst into the room with a friend. As they waited in great excitement for the cricket commentary to start on the radio, their talk was all about cricket, about their own cricket club, the respective merits of players, materials and other relevant matters. Narayan had the same thought as I did. "Yes, Swami and Friends (his first novel about a schoolboy) lives on," he laughed in delight.

0 About the Author: S. Krishnan is an occasional writer who has known R.K. Narayan for tlVO decades. He believes he has read everything that Narayan has written since his first novel Swami and Friends.

a ~~--ÂŤ '-----"

"ALICE ... How do you open "Here. Lemme show yo how this kid-proof aspirin-bottle?" it works."

"Of course 1'111 proud that he's getting his Ph.D., but the idea of calling him 'doctor' galls me/'

Drawing by Von Riegen.

Reprinted by permissiOfl t',i!>Dl tbe ChriSlilm Science Montlor. () 1966 The Christian Science PiJbl~ing All righls reserved. .

Society.

Drawing

by Bo Brown.

Courtesy the Wall Street Journal.

Š 1971. by Dow Jones

&

Company,

Inc.

MAKING DEVELOPMENT WORK FOR PEOPLE What's wrong with development strategies in many developing countries? A world-famous social economist feels there needs to be a shift of emphasis 'away from the high abstractions and generalities of economic growth to the immediate, concrete and critical needs of human beings.'

The greatest obstacle to a renewed em- capital to rebuilding Europe's shattered phasis on international economic devel- industrial base.

Moreover, the strategy fitted very well opment is the widespread suspicion among governments and their constituents that into the suspicion of many ex-colonial nadevelopment assistance "does not work" tions that their late imperial masters had and that further efforts will be no more not been too anxious to endow them with than throwing good aid money after bad. a local industrial base. India compared its "We have had nearly 20 years of various industrial progress inside the British Emprograms," the critics say, "and, at the pire with Japan's outside, and did not find end of it all, we learn there are more poor it irrational to conclude that the core of people, more illiterates, worse income dis- its development strategy should be the tribution and higher pressure on food re- highest mobilization of savings for the a sources than at the beginning. Surely it is most rapid expansion of industry-as substitute for importing, as the basis of folly to carryon strategies which seem so economic independence, as the guarantor clearly to miss their targets."

But, in fact, the times are not unpro- of power.

The trouble about this approach has pitious for a new approach to development strategy. The first .reason is, in a sense, not been that rapid expansion did not take negative. We have mistakes to learn from. place. In fact, the average five per cent The 20 years have produced quite a crop. rate of growth in Gross National Product It is fairly clear that, when the broad lines (GNP) in the developing world throughof aid policy were formulated in the 1950s, out the 1960s is the highest sustained some of the preconceptions were wrong. growth rate ever achieved by modernizing Thinking was dominated by the recent states in the eariy stages of technological history o( the already industrialized world, change. It is at least twice that of the 19thespecially. by the' industrial and techno- . century average.

Nor, clearly, has anything been wrong logical triumphs. of the. two great victors of World War II~the United States, "in- with growth as such. People are not poorer dustrial arsenal of the democracies," and ,because there is more electric power to the Soviet Union, the inventor of indus- lessen backbreaking work, more steel to trialization by the forced draft mobi- build the power stations and railway lization of capital for heavy industry. An tracks, more fertilizer for farms, more outemphasis on seeking development by way put per hectare. A certain sophistry is of rapid investment in industry and its growing up among the already rich, feeling essential infrastructure-power, transport, the surfeit of pollution, littered parks, technical training-was, as it were, built filthy beaches and congested highways. into the aftermath of victory. It was con- They denounce "growth" when they mean firmed by the triumphant success of the excess. There is no excess in developing Marshall Plan, which transferred U.S. lands, and real growth-in materials and

power and skills-is the only way of reaching human standards of living.

The trouble is ,that even with five per cent growth, the development strategy underlying it has proved inadequate. It has¡ not broken what we are now beginning to recognize as the vicious interlocking circles of "obdurate underdevelopment," a condition which makes possible GNP growth of five and six per cent a year, but leaves 40 per cent of the population at the base of society actually worse off. National income improves. The distribution worsens. And within the existing strategy of planned investment, still largely following the models of already developed lands, there is no way out of the deadlock.

We are beginning to recognize its nature. Population increasing at twice the 19th-century rate swamps the ability of a normally unreformed and often overcrowded agriculture to absorb the rising labor force. Migrants stream to the shanty towns of cities which grow at four to eight times faster than population. But, in these exploding metropolises, industrial investment has. all 'too often gOIJe into. capital-intensive industrial technology imported from developed lands. This tech. nology doesn't require unskilled labor, which is abundant. Its requirement is for capital and skills, which are not. The persistence of mass poverty in farms and slums inhibits the growth of internal markets. Foreign markets are often preempted by developed firms and multinational enterprise. Income distribution is postponed in the nam.e of prior capital . accumulation and again limits the market.

The economy thus tends to combine growth with rising unemployment, continuing and even increasing poverty for more people, and, eventually, with growing risks of social dislocation.

It is this picture of growth and poverty combined, of rising output and sinking standards, of traditional societies dislocated before workable modern societies take their place that has cast such a pall of discouragement over the liberal supporters of economic assistance and given such powerful new arguments to those who disapproved of it in any case.

But, at this point, we can see how, by careful study and feedbacks, the negative results can be transformed into creative tools of analysis. A wiser strategy can be devised to make the next phase of development far more productive and successful. The first point to realize is that the historical conditioning of the development strategies of the 1950s and 1960s played a considerable part in lessening the effectiveness of their impact. Developing countries could not spring, fully equipped, into the results of nearly 200 years of economic development. Britain, continental Europe and the United States had gone through their own 'stages of economic growth and diversification. So had Russia, by a different route. So, above all, had Japan, a loser on such a scale in the holocaust of 1945 that, for a time, nobody much bothered even to look at its economic history.

Yet a more careful look at the earlier phases of all these modernized states would have revealed two things. The first was the critical role. played by agricultural expansion (including the ending in Europe of feudalism), and by the downward extension of credit, marketing, services and small-scale enterprise in manufacturing and commerce to a wide network of regional urban centers----:and the re~ulting. spread¡ of economic activity away from single big centers.

Britain's 18th-century market towns with their elegant Georgian corn exchanges, town halls and merchant houses were the foundations upon which a diffused prosperity reached out from London, hitherto .the only financial center.

Without this diffusion, regional industries-cottons in Lancashire, woolens in Yorkshire-would have lacked the means of mobilizing enough capital for their own expansion or of basing their exports on a rising internal market.

In the United States, as Professor John Galbraith has pointed out, it'was the building of the Erie Canal and the opening of the great plains to agriculture, with a hun-

'Japan based its entire miracle of modernization on land reform at all levels and a tripling of agricultural productivity.'

dred growing urban centers far away from the old coastal cities, that put the whole continental experiment into high gear.

Above all, Japan based its entire "miracle" of modernization between the 1880s and 1914 on land reform at all levels, a tripling of agricultural productivity, technical and co-operative services to the small farmer and artisan, and a unique depend.enee upon the small industrial enterprise as the pacesetter for economic growth. In all these historical examples, we see no "jump" into industrialization but an effective modernization of all sectors, achieved by a high degree of decentralization and the strongest possible initial emphasis on the productivity of the farms.

The example of Japan brings us to the second critical historical variant. Japan's experience a century ago is more relevant to modern problems because it was, at the time of its transformation, already a country with considerable pressure of population on its resources and fairly strict limits to the new land it could mobilize for future expansion. In Europe, in the United States and in Russia, this was simply not the case. Population was growing on an average by no more than 1.5 to 1.8 per cent, the work force by perhaps one-half of one per cent. Forty million migrants could leave Europe for the New World and go not to crowded towns and overloaded land but to vast open spaces, taki.ng advantage of homestead acts, land grant colleges, universal education, and rising numbers of urban jobs in new centers.

The vastness of the resources open to the western peoples cushioned the strains.

Colonial expansion dispersed these strains all round the planet. To compare the dilemmas of "obdurate underdevelopment" today with the 'open world, untouched resources and vast elbow room available to the peoples of Europe, Russia and North America a century ago is to annul history and set up perspectives and yardsticks that blind us to the real issues and to the scale of the real tasks.

But if we use economic history with wisdom, noting the steps which all earlier developing states have taken and realizing

the infinitely greater problems and pressures of today, we can hope to evolve a far saner and more realistic approach to development. The encouraging point is the degree to which-:-in the United Nations family (especially the World Bank), in the Congress (jf the United States, in the research centers and among aid-oriented citizen groups-a new order of priorities and urgency is beginning to emerge.

The first point to be noted is that, like our new analysis of the interlocking nature of the obstacles to development, the strategy represents a "systems" approach.

It takes account of the interdependence of the obstacles to be overcome, and suggests an equally coherent and interdependent response. In bringing the various elements together, analysts have relied on con~rete experiences of successful action in such areas as South Korea, Taiwan, Egypt and Yugoslavia. The historical experience of earlier developing nations, and quite especially of Japan, is now given due weight.

A partial knowledge of the dec~ntralized policies pursued in the People's Republic of China is having considerable impact.

The strategy is therefore not based, as was that of the 1950s and 1960s, on largely misleading historical 19th-century analogies. It is rooted in a saner reading of history and in confirmed contemporary fact.

The elements of the new development strategy or "system" can be briefly summarized: (1) A firm priority in funds and trained manpower for the agricultural sector.

(2) The provision of credit, extension I' services and basic inputs-fertilizer, water, improved seeds-in such a way as to include and enhance the efforts of the small farmers. At present, the incomes of nearly a thousand million people depend. upon farms of less than five hectares in size; but, on these mini-holdings, output per hectare can be one-third as large again as in the largest farms-this is the case in Brazil-or even twice as large, as in Guatemala. Even on farms as small as two hectares, Taiwanese farmers have been increasing output by as much as five per cent a year. The critical factors are secu. rity of tenure, access to credit and to the essential inputs of productivity, above all, fertilizer and water. Yet in Iran, only 10 per cent of institutional credit gets to the small farmer. For every $4 an Indian farmer receives, a Japanese farmer receives $42. Here is the critical gap in capital, productivity and, above all, food that the new development approach is beginning to put at the center of its strategy.

(3) Access for peasant farmers to the regional and national economy by the provision of power, water and roads, and . by the building of intermediate market towns and regional cities. Without these symbols and active centers of modernization, the drift to the largest cities will continue. The "peasant" life is not for the young and if, for example, Buenos Aires is the chief center of "modern" attraction in Argentina, nearly 60 - per cent of the people will live there. Educati9n for one's children is one of the great lures. But regional cities can support high schools (one thinks of Denmark's experience) and community colleges, can provide the culture and opportunity for a professional class, and can build up the decentralized leadership which regional growth demands. "Rural" development is, in fact, not so much rural as a creative expansion of farm-market-town relationships in an increasingly modernized region.

(4) The establishment in the inter-' mediate centers, of marketing, co-operative and financial services, and of agroindustries aimed at meeting simple consumer needs, providing the inputs needed for agriculture, and expanding farm processing. Here Japan's quite recent example is relevant. In the enormous effort made to recover after 1945, the government expanded every kind of service~consultancy, investment, managerial advice-for the smallest enterprise. In the 1950s, the units were encouraged to form service

'Rural development is not so much rural as a creative expansion of farm-markettown relationships in an increasingly modernized region.'

co-operatives to cover marketing, group purchasing, information and borrowing.

In India, by contrast, industrial estates were not linked to advisory services. Worse still, such services were not sited in agricultural market centers and could not effect a cumulative expansion of entrepreneurial opportunity and widely diffused property.

(5) The purposive provision of employment by concentrating on laborintensive farming, by absorbing unskilled labor into large-scale building projects, and by developing "intermediate technology" and service-type industries in the new urban centers.

(6) The centering of schools, technical colleges, hospitals, family health clinics and mobile health units in the new communities.

(7) The whole effort to be planned and developed with maximum regional and popular participation in decision-making and in the process of .capital formation needed for development. In Taiwan and

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HIGHLIGHTS

Korea, for instance, local co-operatives, based upon a sufficient scale of membership, have so increased local savings that from half to three-quarters of the working capital is provided by reinvestment of the farmers' own profits. . Everyone of these elements can be found in concrete experience both in the past history of already developed lands and in today's most successful developing communities. Taken together, they represent a "systems" approach to development rooted in historical reality and contemporary fact.

In the early stages, a critical element is adequate capital. The strategy of the 1950s was not wrong in stressing this.

It simply directed it faultily. Over time, small savings by a very large number of people can equal the large savings of a few. But the early stages of any decentralized and "popular" strategy can be crippled by lack of capital while the habits and co-operative institutions for small savers are being built up. Outside help is essential. It has therefore to be said that the new development strategy is not "on the cheap." It demands a return to the ideal of a transfer from rich to poor nations of at least the proposed one per cent of GNP. But the funds can now have some hope of reaching the critical elements-credit for the small farmer and entrepreneur, the regional infrastructure of roads and power, and, ,above all, the new urban "grid."

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Moreover, these are three areas in which capital released from international development funds can become a multiplier both of employment and saving.

Farmers in co-operative groups can be issued credit with careful provisions for repayment. The .original grant leads to a revolving fund. Public works based on mass use of labor can be combined with popular saving schemes. Widespread urban construction has been, throughout the industrial era, the largest absorber of unskilled labor and also a most effective multiplier of effective demand as citizens begin, through mortgage banks and home loan associations, to save for their own houses and spark demand for building materials. The whole program lessens the risk of markets too narrow to absorb the economy's increasing productivity, and begins to build up the mass market at home which is the best guarantee of an effective export effort.

Hitherto, development aid, by giving priority to the concept of economic and largely industrial growth irrespective of historical realities or social consequences, has tended to produce an economic market too limjted for further expansion and social benefits too narrow for long-term acceptance. By putting employment, participation and regional development at the , head of the priority list, the new strategy promises to produce not only greater social coherence, but more rapid and widespread growth as well..

serve them internationally, away from the high abst'ractions and generalities of eco'Population increasing at nomic growth" to the immediate, concrete and critical needs of human beings. twice the 19th-century We should be very clear about this, The rate swamps the ability of new strategy in no way diminishes the agriculture to absorb importance of economic growth. Without more resources, without higher productthe rising labor force.' ivity, without power, without food, what lies ahead but increasing misery and the deepening risk of mass famines? But the Nor are the advantages confined to switch from "sectors" to "people" is a 'developing lands. Provided development switch to the kind of investment that prois going forward on this new wide and duces the most needed forms of growth, popular basis, the developing world will encourages' and enhances the people who become an expanding market for already have to do the bulk of the work and developed producers. If the developing gives them the. highest incentive: the world, for at least another two decades, hope of sharing, with some justice, in the could enjoy-thanks to the funds made fruits of their labor. Here, surely, we available through development assistance can see a genuine key to the chance of a -a negative balance of payments, it would peaceful world.

0 steadily absorb more goods than it could sell. This process would allow the developed producers to enjoy that¡ surplus About the Author: Barbara Ward, a distintrade balance they all seek and to do so guished social economist, is the author of without ruining each other in supercom- more than a dozen books, including Spaceship petition for the third car and fifth tele- Earth, that stress the economic interdependvision set. Thus the steadily increasing ence of nations. Born in Britain, she has long productivity of the developing world, been associated with the prestigious London magazine, The Economist. In 1968 she was backed by external aid, would take the appointed Albert Schweitzer Professor of Interstrain off the already rich and increasingly national Economics at New York City's Columcompetitive developed states. bia University-the first woman to occupy one But perhaps the most important feature of the chairs created "to attract the world's of the new strategy is that it shifts the outStanding scholars." .She is now serving as attention of developed and developing president of the International Institute for nations, and of the institutions which Environmental Affairs in New York City.

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