With Nobel Laureate John Polanyi's speech about his life in the field of science falling only a few days after the Virginia Tech tragedy, it came as no surprise when he related the two topics.
"Is there a relevance to this topic," Polanyi asked the audience, "and these events having to do with your friends at Virginia Tech?"
Polanyi suggested that since science gives rise to technology, the two are related.
"Technology provides these ready instruments that can create life and death," Polanyi said.
He suggested that while guns and nuclear weapons can take many lives, penicillin and other types of medical technology make life possible at the same time.
In his speech last Thursday, Polanyi, the recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in reaction theory, spoke to the University community in the Dome Room about his experience in the scientific community. He emphasized how science plays a role in everyone's lives through current events, not just the tragedy at Tech, but also nuclear nonproliferation and the situation in Afghanistan.
"Instead of guiding our lives by dogma [through religious books], we should consult our minds and reason for ourselves," Polanyi said.
Polanyi elaborated that these ideas originated from the Enlightenment and thinkers like Thomas Jefferson. He went on to "philosophize" about how people should still pursue discoveries with the possibility of their new ideas being used for less-than-ideal reasons.
"If you tell people, 'Think for yourself,' the consequences can be marvelous," Polanyi said. "But if you take the freedom to the extent [that] you lose morality ... dangerous things happen."
Polanyi said he felt that society was moving in a positive direction with the moral use of new technology.
"It's important we know we're making progress lest we become cynics or mass murderers," Polanyi said.
Polanyi also spoke about scientific study as he likened the process to how a painter does not exactly copy his subject, but might show it in an entirely different light.
"Play is the other element in discovery," Polanyi said.
Polanyi told how often the unexpected could change scientific research by relating how the basis for the scanning tunneling microscope's invention was actually derived from a machine "not under our control."
Machines working in surprising ways is not the only way things could go wrong, so scientists should be afraid of failure but still have resolve in their ideas.
"That's what makes science hard," Polanyi said. "You have to have the guts to stick with a new idea. It takes courage."
Polanyi noted some bureaucratic science policies did not agree with these ideas. Often policies attempt to make scientists predict discoveries and estimate their commercial value.
Polanyi said since "the function of science is to surprise you ... these policies are doomed to fail."
Polanyi added that while this thought process might be vital in commercial labs, they have no place in universities.
"We're set apart for the benefit of society," Polanyi said. "Universities have to be protected from the demands of wealth production."
He pointed out strict management of scientific research still occurs within universities such as his own University of Toronto, which created checkpoints to monitor the progress of research.
Polanyi said any group of scientists that meets "milestones isn't doing research, because they know where they're going in advance."
Curry graduate student Dengting Boyanton said she found Polanyi's speech "inspiring."
"I'm really interested in what motivates people and how they care about society," she said.
Polanyi uses his scientific background as a basis for his involvement with many aspects of public policy. With the Senlis Council, an international think tank, Polanyi looks into counter-narcotics efforts and how they relate to Afghanistan's reconstruction efforts.
"The biggest problem in Afghanistan is opium," Polanyi said. "The action being taken is to try and assist the Afghan government in destroying the poppy crop."
The Senlis Council and Polanyi want the Afghan president to start controlling the growth of opium in a legal fashion; however, Polanyi said the efforts are not effective since poppy-farming is the livelihood of a great deal of people. Polanyi was specifically interested in the dual uses of poppies: negatively as an illegal drug and positively in pain relief drugs such as codeine and morphine.
"Eighty percent of the world has no pain relief," Polanyi said, adding that the present supply comes from Australia, Turkey and Iran where it is all legal.
Polanyi has also been pursuing the control of other international problems, including nuclear weapons. Polanyi has been as far as Moscow in efforts to end nuclear proliferation. While many scientists are involved in the nuclear weapon debate, Polanyi said many more should be.
"We sometimes think human beings can be legitimately killed like insects," Polanyi said. "We're guilty of this ourselves ... when we ignore the presence of these weapons."
Polanyi has been personally involved in the debates, as his work was used in former President Ronald Reagan's proposed Star Wars missile defense system.
"I didn't feel any remorse ... I know people involved in nuclear power research," Polanyi said. "We can't set ourselves the task of only making discoveries that can be used for beneficent reasons."
Polanyi did, however, have an opinion on the issue, saying he wanted both the Soviet Union and the U.S. to denounce these defensive systems as he feels they only provoke an arms race.
Even though Polanyi has been involved in the debate on the good versus the evil of sceintific knowledge for decades, he does not think it should hamper research.
Scientific discovery is "like discovering a new word that cannot be used for ill," Polanyi said. "It's impossible."
Polanyi was brought to the University with the Nobel Laureate Science Lecture Series through Prof. Ian Harris, chair of the University's department of chemistry, who Polanyi once mentored.
"The goal of the series is to recognize and promote science at the University," said Research Communications Coordinator Melissa Maki. "We hope it will contribute to excellence in science and research here."
Maki said she found the talk to be fascinating even without a background in science, because Polanyi related his ideas on science policy and peace and disarmament.
"He talked a lot about how scientists can not only do science but use their science to make the world a better place," she said.
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