What Shanl We Mam?

The Tragedy of the Commons

The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.

Garrett Hardin

At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York (1) concluded that: “Both sides in the arms race are … confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered profes- sional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great pow- ers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situa- tion.”

I would like to focus your attention not on the subject of the article (na- tional security in a nuclear world) but on the kind of conclusion they reached, namely that there is no technical solu- tion to the problem. An implicit and almost universal assumption of discus- sions published in professional and semipopular scientific journals is that the problem under discussion has a technical solution. A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in. the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.

In our day (though not in earlier times) technical solutions are always welcome. Because of previous failures in prophecy, it takes courage to assert that a desired technical solution is not possible. Wiesner and York exhibited this courage; publishing in a science journal, they insisted that the solution to the problem was not to be found in the natural sciences. They cautiously qualified their statement with the phrase, “It is our considered profes-

The author is professor of biology, University of California, Santa Barbara. This article is based on a presidential address presented before the meeting of the Pacific Division of the Ameri- can Association for the Advancement of Science at Utah State University, Logan, 25 June 1968.Read Week 4 narrative
Read the following essay, “Tragedy of the Commons,” by Garrett HardinActions
Answer the following two reading comprehension questions in 4 sentences each:

What does Hardin mean by mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon as a solution to regulating the commons?

Why does Hardin think that technology can™t solve the population problem?