Barry Commoner Quotes
The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
Commoner, Barry. Science and Survival. New York: Viking Press, 1966.
The English Language has been in use for over 1000 years. English and English Speaking scientists have been active througout that time. Yet at the time that Wulf pointed this out, the actual word "Scientist" had been in use for less than a century.
In the French Revolutionary reign of terror, people were settling old scores and denouncing anyone they had an issue with as anti-revolutionary. And nobility were extremely suspect. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) was not only a great scientist but a wealthy noble who also was an expert on government finance and had served as a tax collector. Lavoisier’s defense was that he could finish his scientific experiments that the whole world could benefit from. Ironically, 3 months after Lavoisier was beheaded, the judge himself was denounced by an enemy and he too was sent to the guillotine.
For many people, especially, bright and educated people, science has been an escape from unstable, political situations.
Barry Commoner was an American cellular biologist, college professor, and politician. He was a leading ecologist and among the founders of the modern environmental movement. He was the director of the Center for Biology of Natural Systems and its Critical Genetics Project. He ran as the Citizens Party candidate in the 1980 U.S. presidential election. His work studying the radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing led to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
