The Power and Limitations of Science and Technology

Abstract

In 1984 the housing developments of Henderson, Nevada, just south of Las Vegas were slowly but surely spreading into the vast desert that only a few years earlier had been considered uninhabitable. Green lawns which were sprinkled every day by water from nearby Lake Mead belied the notion that these rock-hard barren areas could not be conquered. Thus, a trip to the “desert” to witness high technology in action took a group of us from the EPA only a few dozen yards from a new row of homes surrounded with cars, pickup trucks, and children’s bicycles.

If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals—eating and drinking them and taking them into the very marrow of our bones—we had better know something about their nature and their power.

—Rachel Carson

Science can only give us tools in a box. But of what value are these miraculous tools until we have mastered their cultural and human use?

—Frank Lloyd Wright