William A Thomas – författare

Law and science are pervasive in society, and we depend upon their fruitful collaboration to promote stability and progress. The substance and procedures of law guide our judicial, legislative, and administrative systems. Science and technology stimulate our imagination and contribute to the production and distribution of virtually all goods and services. The need for scientists and lawyers to understand the strengths and limitations of each other's profession has never been more apparent.

Science and law both strive to ascertain the truth, but the two professions often do not cooperate as fully–and thus, as effectively–as they might in addressing the growing list of intricate problems facing society. Science and technology increasingly interact with the legal system, helping to resolve existing problems and raising new questions of social significance. The active cooperation of lawyers and scientists is needed to increase the beneficial aspects of these interactions and decrease the detrimental ones; the desirability of promoting better understanding by lawyers and scientists of the aspirations and limitations of each other's profession has never been more apparent. This book is designed to help overcome the misunderstandings that often inhibit joint efforts by the two professions and to promote respect for the law-science alliance. The authors of the far-ranging essays are experienced practitioners of law or science and recognized experts at formulating multidisciplinary solutions to complex contemporary problems.

Researchers and agencies collect reams of objective data and authors publish volumes of subjective prose in attempts to explain what is meant by environmental quality. Still, we have no universally recognized methods for combining our quantitative measures with our qualitative concepts of environ­ ment. Not all of our environmental goals should be reduced to mere numbers, but many of them can be; and without these quantitative terms, we have no way of defining our present position nor of selecting positions we wish to attain on any logically established scale of environmen tal values. Stated simply, in our zeal to measure our environment we often forget that masses of numbers describing a system are insufficient to understand it or to be used in selecting goals and priorities for expending our economic and human resources. Attempts at quantitatively describing environmental quality, rather than merely measuring different environmental variables, are relatively recent. This condensing of data into the optimum number of terms with maximum information content is a truly interdisciplinary challenge. When Oak Ridge National Laboratory initiated its Environmental Program in early 1970 under a grant from the National Science Foundation, the usefulness of environmental indicators in assessing the effects of technology was included as one of the initial areas for investigation. James L. Liverman, through his encouragement and firm belief that these indicators are indispensable if we are to resolve our complex environmental problems, deserves much of the credit for the publication of this book.