In an advanced industrial society, however democratic, a "handful of men in secret" make the choices that "determine in the crudest sense whether we live or die." So argued English Novelist Sir Charles Percy Snow last week as he delivered Harvard University's prestigious Godkin Lectures on public affairs.* Snow's plea was for more scientists in government, thus minimizing the role of hunch and political intuition.
Famed as a critic of the "two-culture" gap between scientists and nonscientists, Sir Charles is qualified to protest: he was a physicist long before he became Britain's most...