| President's Column John Hubbell |
Most of us do not operate at a single level of motivation,
but at several levels, some open and overt to our families, to
our work partners and to the public at large. There are also
deeper levels of motivation which we develop as we travel our
individual paths from birth to death, which we often feel inhibited
from sharing with the outside world. These secret and deeper
levels of motivation are our "hidden agendas." Although
many of these hidden agendas remain hidden because we are not
particularly proud of them, I think there are also many hidden
agendas which are too noble to share with other persons, yet result
in lives and actions of enormous benefit to the global human family.
Similarly, I think the International Radiation Physics Society,
as it travels its path from its conception in Calcutta in 1974
and its birth in Ferrara in 1985, to its ultimate demise(?) in
the uncertain and shadowy future, has both overt and hidden agendas,
both of the noble character.
The overt agenda of the IRPS is of course the promotion
of Radiation Physics and the facilitation of communication between
researchers as well as users in the general cross-disciplinary
area of radiation physics. These researchers and users are drawn
from a great variety of normally compartmentalized disciplines,
such as medical physics, crystallography, nuclear power, industrial
irradiation processing, industrial radiation imaging and gauging,
x-ray astronomy, physics teachers, and the list goes on and on.
For all, radiation physics (radiation sources, radiation detectors,
radiation interactions: theory and measurements) is the common
thread which has brought us together to form the International
Radiation Physics Society.
With our triennial International Symposia on Radiation
Physics (ISRP's) and our quarterly IRPS Bulletin newsletter,
I think we are fulfilling our overt agenda. Our numbers are gradually
increasing, as more and more researchers are finding out about
us and realizing the benefits of the cross-fertilizations between
otherwise isolated disciplines, uniquely provided by our Society.
Our membership has now passed the 500 mark, drawn from over 60
countries scattered over the entire globe.
Our innovative and unique tiered dues structure encourages
membership from developing countries and also from developed but
economically depressed countries. Russia and other Former Soviet
Union countries, also South Africa, have recently been added to
the latter category for our IRPS dues assessment purposes. For
the above countries, the annual dues are only $5, or discounted
even further to $12.50 for three years [the preferred mode of
payment]. Even for the developed countries, such as the U.S., Western Europe,
Japan and Australia, the annual dues are only $15, discounted
to $40 for three years [the preferred schedule, matching the interval
between our triennial Symposia]. For students the dues are reduced
even more. What other national or international professional
society is less demanding of its members, financially?
Typical of our triennial Symposia, our next one,
ISRP-7 in Jaipur, India February 24-28, 1997 offers cutting-edge
invited oral papers by leaders in their fields, grouped under
the topics:
Contributed papers on these and all other topics
related to our common thread of radiation physics are warmly invited.
Besides the technical aspects of the Symposium, Jaipur and its
surroundings are richly picturesque, including an exposure to
the history and culture of the host country.
Following ISRP-7 in Jaipur in 1997, our next triennial
Symposium ISRP-8 in the year 2000 will be in Prague in the Czech
Republic, another attractive venue typical of our Symposia. Previous
venues, in addition to the above mentioned Calcutta (ISRP-1, 1974)
and Ferrara (ISRP-3, 1985), have included Penang (ISRP-2, 1982),
São Paulo (ISRP-4, 1988), Dubrovnik (ISRP-5, 1991) and
Rabat (ISRP-6, 1994)
For those of you reading this column who are not already members of the IRPS, further information may be obtained from
THE NOOSPHERE, GORILLAS, PEN-PALS, TUNNELS AND
A HIDDEN AGENDA
The "Noosphere":
As many of you know from previous readings of this
Column, I have been influenced by the writings of the Jesuit paleontologist
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). In addition to
his fossil expeditions into the Gobi Desert and his participation
in the discovery of the "Peking Man" fossil remains
in Choukoutien (the famous cave is very near the China Institute
of Atomic Energy, southwest of Beijing), Chardin wrote a number
of books integrating his views of the past, present and future
of mankind's niche in the cosmos. His most well known book is
The Phenomenon of Man (Le Phenomene Humain) in which
he mentions the "spheres" associated with our planet
earth: the "barysphere" the heavy core of the earth,
outside which lies the "lithosphere" outer rocky layer,
outside which lies the "hydrosphere" (the oceans) and
the "atmosphere" the upper portion of which is the "stratosphere"
and so on.
Mainly occupying the earth's hydrosphere and atmosphere
is the "biosphere," the totality of the myriad varieties
of the amazing self-replicating arrangements of atoms to which
we attribute "life," whatever that is. According to
recent news reports, based on microscopic examination of a meteorite
found in Antarctica, our neighbor planet Mars also once possessed
a biosphere, suggesting that due to the benign and/or fortuitous
nature of inter-atomic forces and the available mix of elements
throughout the cosmos, "life" is ever and everywhere
poised to spring into reality.
Through aeons of the evolutionary process (or whatever)
the biosphere produced a life form sufficiently complex to enjoy
reflective thought, and to preserve and exchange these thoughts,
and so here we are. Teilhard de Chardin envisioned these exchanges
of thoughts not just within clans and nations, but as a "thinking
skin" covering the entire planet earth, adding one more sphere
the "noosphere" ("noo-" for mind). During
Chardin's lifetime these exchanges were mostly by postal mail,
and to some extent by telephone, and face-to-face at conferences
and other travel situations. In 1996 the noosphere, with the
available new electronic networks, is functioning more and more
like a global "brain of brains."
On the other hand, unfortunately, the global human
family is still partitioned by age-old hatreds and mistrust, often
erupting in downright barbarism, arising from ethnic, religious
(sectarian rigidities, not the deeper personal religious aspirations),
nationalistic/territorial, economic and other barriers. These
barriers inhibit the full realization of the loving, caring noosphere
envisioned by Chardin, serving the "global human family".
In Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechniya, Ireland and elsewhere around the
globe including in my own country the United States, repulsive
forces seem to be at work between fellow human beings, rather
than attraction.
The behavior of some humans is sometimes put to shame
even by the gorilla, to whom we tend to think ourselves superior
and less "beastly." According to another recent news
report, a very young boy visiting an American zoo managed to climb
into the gorilla enclosure and fall into a deep concrete pit,
rendering him unconscious, and difficult to be retrieved. A mother
gorilla, noticing the boy's predicament, dropped herself down
into the pit, tenderly picked up the boy in her arms, and brought
him to a door of the enclosure where human aid could take over.
Barriers, even between species, can apparently be "tunneled
through."
What can we do, as members of the IRPS "global
radiation physics family," to move the human race, at least
a little, toward the ideal of a seamless caring, loving "noosphere"?
I think all international Societies, particularly
in the physical sciences, eventually come to realize that, in
addition to their topical focus, their individual members have
unique access to individual fellow researchers on the opposite
sides of such barriers as are mentioned above. The IRPS, with
its conscious effort to be truly global with respect to developing
as well as developed countries, provides such access between very-different
cultures and political systems, unparalleled among scientific
and other international Societies, in my opinion.
When I was a child in my home town of Manistee, Michigan,
our Methodist church-school newsletter promoted the idea of "pen-pals"
with children in foreign countries, and provided the go-between
for getting such correspondences started. I think my pen-pal
(I can't remember whether male or female) was from Europe, perhaps
Denmark, so the barriers between us were minimal. Nevertheless,
the seed was planted for a hunger to communicate with persons
outside my normal sphere. In establishing my career in radiation
physics, it was a great joy to realize that barriers much more
formidable than geography could be "tunneled through"
via scientific exchanges. For example, I now find myself to be
"honorary grandfather" to Tran Vuong Tung ("King
of Pine's Tree"), age 7 as of August 20 in Ho Chi Minh City,
Viet Nam, son of my radiation physics colleague Tran Van Luyen.
The mother gorilla has raised our consciousness as
humans about the fundamental nature of the goodness of life and
loving and caring, as she tunneled through the species barrier
and rescued the little boy. I think we as individual members
of the IRPS have an enormous and unique opportunity to take on
as a worthy and noble "hidden agenda" for the IRPS ---
"tunneling through" the political, cultural, religious
and other barriers besetting our tiny spinning island in space,
moving us at least a little toward Chardin's loving, caring "noosphere."
The IRPS overt agenda, with its above-listed benefits,
is what has brought us together. This overt agenda may
serve also as the foundation for an IRPS hidden agenda
of even greater benefit to the general global human family.
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