No final statement can be made regarding the relations between science and policy-making. Knowledge, values, and techniques are interrelated, cumulative, and constantly changing. They are derived from man's responses to the complicated interactions between physical, biological, and cultural phenomena. Final answers are impossible because the answers themselves are part of the world and therefore are factors in changing it. We see through a glass darkly, whether it be the giant glass of Palomar or the eye-piece of the electron microscope.

When people talk about the “present crisis,” they probably mean some significant turning point in history. If they fear or resent it, it is a dangerous crisis, anti-American, anti-Christian, and antidemocratic. If they welcome it, they may call it the “wave of the future,” or some kind of a “deal,” new, square, or fair; prosperity is just around the corner. Only unwanted change produces the “dangerous crisis.”.