On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
MAY 1956
THE HARDWIRED BRAIN--"How big a role does heredity play in behavior? In the lower vertebrates, at least, many features of visual perception--the sense of direction and location in space, the perception of motion and the like--are built into the organism and do not have to be learned. The whole idea of instincts and the inheritance of behavior traits is becoming much more palatable than it was 15 years ago, when we lacked a satisfactory basis for explaining the organization of inborn behavior. Every animal comes into the world with inherited behavior patterns of its species. Much of its behavior is a product of evolution, just as its biological structure is. --R. W. Sperry" [Editors' note: Roger Wolcott Sperry was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981.]
Disloyalty Test--"Last year President Eisenhower asked Det?lev W. Bronk, president of the National Academy of Sciences, to look into the question of whether scientists accused of disloyalty should be allowed to do unclassified research under Government grants-in-aid or contracts. Bronk's committee held that scientific research should be judged on its own merits: a contribution to the cure of cancer 'would be no less beneficial to all humanity for having been made by a Communist.'"