Understanding Accomplishment

Abstract

"Considering the fact that he has been at it for only a few thousand years, man makes rather good textiles. He even is able to make acceptable textile fibers. Com pared to nature, however, he still is an amateur with much to learn. Of course nature has carried on its development over some hundreds of thousands of years, and man cannot wait that long. Fortunately he doesn't have to. He can accomplish in a decade results that would require hundreds of years by empirical methods or thousands of years by processes of evolution and natural selection. This he can do in one way only: by research, intelligent and intensive research vigorously supported and patiently followed up in production.... In our modern tempo that industry is in danger which is in a static state. Research, with its yield of new and better products, is not a luxury; it is a necessity, often as a defense against encroachment from without. The world in which we live is going to change, politically and sociologically, no doubt, but also technically. We have no choice as to whether we will change with it. We simply have a choice as to whether we will change rapidly enough and sanely enough to remain part of the essential scheme of things."—VANNEVAR BUSH