Materials and Man’s Needs: Supplementary Report of the Committee on the Survey of Materials Science and Engineering (COSMAT) . Vol. 1: The History, Scope, and Nature of Materials Science and Engineering . Vol. 2: The Needs, Priorities, and Opportunities for Materials Research . Vol. 3: The Institutional Framework for Materials Science and Engineering . Vol. 4: Aspects of Materials Technology Abroad by National Academy of Sciences, and: Materials and Mans Needs: Summary Report of COSMAT by …
1976; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 17; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tech.1976.a891789
ISSN1097-3729
Autores Tópico(s)Advanced Materials Characterization Techniques
Resumo570 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Materials and Man’s Needs: Supplementary Report of the Committee on the Survey of Materials Science and Engineering (COSMAT). Vol. 1: The History, Scope, and Nature ofMaterials Science and Engineering. Vol. 2: The Needs, Priorities, and Opportunitiesfor Materials Research. Vol. 3: The Institutional Frameworkfor Materials Science and Engineering. Vol. 4: Aspects ofMaterials Technology Abroad. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1975. Pp. 259; 347; 270; 299. $8.75 (vol. 1); $10.75 (vol. 2); $8.75 (vol. 3); $9.50 (vol. 4). Order from National Technical Information Service, 5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield, Virginia 22151. Materials and Mans Needs: Summary Report of COSMAT. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1974. Pp. 217. $5.75. Some years ago, the veteran British physicist, E. N. da C. Andrade, concluded a metallurgical lecture with the words: “One blushes, one stammers, one relapses into silence.” One might suppose that this merely represented a physicist’s natural modesty in the face of metal lurgical complexities, but to anyone who knew Andrade, the words lacked a certain measure of verisimilitude; since he was speaking in France, an element of rhetoric was perhaps implicit in his formula tion. In contemplating the remarkable achievement of COSMAT, I am tempted to emulate Andrade’s response: comment and criticism stand abashed before such evidence of selfless labor long sustained. But the temptation must be resisted, for the report needs to be drawn to the attention of the wide readership which stands to profit from it. This is not a publication merely for the fraternity of materials specialists, but it offers something to historians, politicians, devotees of science policy, and to captains of industry. One can appreciate the point by comparing this report with a book {Perspectives in Materials Research) published in 1963 by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, also devoted to an analysis of the then current state and likely trends of research in materials science and engineering. That useful book was purely scientific and technical in conception: the COSMAT report starts with a major incursion into history, and turns its attention, again and again, to weighty issues of organization, financing, interna tional relations, and to the competing claims of planning and pluralism. In large stretches of the report, materials are left aside: the discussion widens to embrace all of technology. This is entirely as it should be: interdisciplinarity is one of the key concepts in the report, and it is right and proper to draw conclusions about the ostensible theme, materials science and engineering, from more general insights into other fields of science and engineering, and indeed into technol ogy as a whole. In 1970 the National Academy’s Committee on Science and Public Policy sponsored the establishment of COSMAT as one of a series of TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 571 studies which seek to identify research priorities. Its report differs from earlier ones in part because the materials held is not yet a homogeneous and accepted discipline, like physics, chemistry, or mechanical engineering, it does not have a professional institution covering the whole extent of the Held. The committee (COSMAT) was chaired by Morris Cohen, a metallurgy professor at M.I.T., and cochaired by William Baker, then a senior research executive, now president of Bell Telephone Laboratories. Another Bell executive, Alan Chynoweth, and another academic metallurgist, Victor Rad cliffe, organized the immense opinion survey, involving nearly 1,000 materials experts, which was a central feature of COSMAT’s enter prise. The Summary Report, published in 1974, incorporates a series of agreed recommendations, with COSMAT’s authority behind them. The Supplementary Report, recently published, incorporates the re sults of the survey and also articles and statistics, sometimes mutually overlapping in their ambit, assembled by a number of specialist panels. The articles include numerous analyses, valuejudgments, and forecasts, and these do not have COSMAT’s collective weight behind them; but having the stamp of individual style and experience, they are sometimes more instructive and compelling than the committee’s collective utterances. The report opens with an illuminating sixty-two-page historical essay on materials and society, in which the hands of Cyril Stanley Smith and of Melvin Kranzberg...
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