Progressive Chrysanthemums

Along with the late-blooming asters and chrysanthemums, the end of summer brought a blossoming of learned conferences, all dedicated to the hopeful (and frequently alarming) pursuit of progress: P:The British Association for the Advancement of Science, in Belfast, was greeted at its 114th session by its previous president, the Duke of Edinburgh. Theme of the conference: "Of what use is science if man does not survive?" Discussion ranged from the number of mouse hairs contained in a pound of flour (there may be as many as 180), to a time-motion study of the Royal Navy (only 15% of British tars shave before noon), to problems of parthenogenesis among humans (verdict: unisexual reproduction, common in insects, is unlikely to be achieved by women, but it would cause a dickens of a problem if it should be). P: The Interparliamentary Union, in Bern, Switzerland, attracted 350 junketing parliamentarians from 33 nations, including Senator Estes Kefauver (see PEOPLE). Chief topic: a Universal Parliament. The majority was for it, but old Tom Connally of Texas, retiring chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sturdily announced: "If there had been one world government, the Continental Congress, the French Revolution and the Latin American Republics would not have been possible."

P:The Seventh International Congress of Linguists, in London, amid a babble of 412 delegates, spent a week debating such questions as "Can a logical calculus be devised that should be structurally independent of the grammatical principles of any known language?" Two U.S. linguists presented one more piece of evidence that man is gradually being replaced by the machine: an apparatus artificially reproducing human speech. P:The International Astronautical Federation, in Stuttgart, Germany, discussed ways & means of launching man-carrying rockets into outer space. (Not present: Space Patrol's Commander Buzz Corry, who has already been there and back--on TV.) The federation heard that long-range rockets like Hitler's V28 can and probably will be fired to the moon, or to Mars and Venus, within the next ten or 20 years. But spatial pioneers will face such problems as "prohibitively great cosmic radiation" and how to boil weightless water that refuses to stay in contact with the bottom of a pan. From Dr. Wernher von Braun, designer of the V2, now a guided missile expert for the U.S. Army, came an H. G. Wellsian look into the future: "On that future day when our satellite vessels are circling the earth, when men in an out-station can view our planet against the star-studded blackness of infinity ... on that day, I say, fratricidal war will be banished from the star on which we live. Humanity will then be prepared to enter . . . the Cosmic Age." P:The International Astronomical Union, in Rome, took off where the Astronauts landed, invited its 400 stargazers from 35 nations to contemplate a "universe whose dimensions . . . appear beyond thought and transcend our imagination." The union adopted one house rule: no talk of flying saucers. But Russian Delegate Professor Boris Kukarkin revealed the Communist Party line on such "optical phenomena of fantasy." They are "a war psychosis," said Kukarkin, adding that there were certainly no flying saucers over Russia--though there would be room enough. Cf The American Psychological Association, in Washington, analyzed itself and prescribed a code of ethics designed to help the "ethical psychologist become even more ethical." The association frowned on "charlatans" who advise extramarital pick-me-ups, and solemnly banned i) psychological demonstrations for "public entertainment"; 2) Washington as a future meeting place, because Negro members of the association had been refused service in the capital's restaurants.

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