¶ Reduction to Practice
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Index Entry
Reduction to Practice:
“Back in 1932 then, thinking that I would commit myself to only alterations of the environment-- not to ‘multidisciplines’ and so forth. I must never then ‘talk about’ anything. Whatever ideas I have I must find out how to translate them into some effect on the environment, in principle, and I must not talk about them until I have reduced them into practice and have discovered advantage for man. And I’ve really been able to prove to myself-- I find that bright ideas are so profuse-- but they don’t get reduced to practice, you don’t really know what the interactions are with the times and other environmental events. . . . So I would never talk about it until I have reduced it to practice: something physical. And somebody would say: what is that? And then I’d have the responsibility of telling them what it was. But I mustn’t even ask them to look at it. I’ve really held very tightly to these disciplines, because I was interested in what the individual could do on behalf of his fellow man. . . even in a very few years.”
