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∂AIL Professor Harvey Brooks↓
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138∞

Dear Professor Brooks:

	Muriel Bell gave me a copy of your "Science, Technology and
Material Progress", and here are some reactions to it.

	I entirely agree with the conclusion %2"there do not appear
to be any fundamental physical or technical obstacles to continued
material progress in the world"%1 and the corollary conclusion %2"the
obstacles to continued material progress in the world are social,
political, and institutional; they are determined not by the relations
between man and nature but by the relations of men to each other"%1.

	However, your remarks about the nature of the political, social
and institutional obstacles seem to ignore the dominant institutional
but primarily political phenomena that make up these obstacles.

	I don't claim to understand fully the nature of the
anti-technological political movement.  Maybe it isn't one movement
but several, but I will contend that it has to be understood as
a movement with recruiting processes, claims on power and office,
internal loyalties and conflicts, and periods of growth and decline
and not just as the sum of individual reactions to experience
with the technological world.
Besides the movement, there is a more diffuse reaction to technology
itself and to the activities of anti-technology and pro-technology
political movements.  (The latter is quite small but exists).

	Consider the following null hypothesis which I will try to
refute.  The objections to the expansion of nuclear energy are the
sum of individual reactions to the facts of the matter and individual
values about risks, individual values about the virtues of
large and small scale industry, and individual values about the
relative importance of equality and enterprise.
This isn't a complete list of the value-phenomena that people
would like taken into account, but my point isn't the completeness
of the list.

	It seems to me that the discussion of anti-technological
sentiments is inadequate, because it doesn't take into account
anti-technology as political and social movement.  This movement
like others has many aspects that are not simply
the sum of personal reactions to the perceived facts about
technology and society.

	1. There are full time people whose careers are bound
up with it.

	2. For many people it consitutes a claim on political
power.

	3. It has alliances with environmentalism and with
anti-capitalism among others.
.if false then begin
It seems that in the study there were compromises on what was
asserted to be the facts and not merely on what policy was
recommended.  Specifically, there seemed to be a bargain to
give up oil shale in exchange for more of a consensus on
developing nuclear energy.  Such a compromise might be appropriate
for politicians to make in deciding on what to fund, but 
it seems to me that in science it is better to admit disagreement
than to state as facts what people don't believe.

.end