ocial and economic development. Indeed, the participation of the people
on whose commitment and efforts the success of such a strategy depends
becomes effective only as consultation is made the organizing principle of
every project. "No man can attain his true station", is Baha'u'llah's
counsel, "except through his justice. No power can exist except through
unity. No welfare and no well-being can be attained except through
consultation."

IV

The tasks entailed in the development of a global society call for levels
of capacity far beyond anything the human race has so far been able to
muster. Reaching these levels will require an enormous expansion in access
to knowledge, on the part of individuals and social organizations alike.
Universal education will be an indispensable contributor to this process
of capacity building, but the effort will succeed only as human affairs
are so reorganized as to enable both individuals and groups in every
sector of society to acquire knowledge and apply it to the shaping of
human affairs.

Throughout recorded history, human consciousness has depended upon two
basic knowledge systems through which its potentialities have
progressively been expressed: science and religion. Through these two
agencies, the race's experience has been organized, its environment
interpreted, its latent powers explored, and its moral and intellectual
life disciplined. They have acted as the real progenitors of civilization.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is evident, moreover, that the
effectiveness of this dual structure has been greatest during those
periods when, each in its own sphere, religion and science were able to
work in concert.

Given the almost universal respect in which science is currently held, its
credentials need no elaboration. In the context of a strategy of social
and economic development, the issue rather is how scientific and
technological activity is to be organized. If the work involved is viewed
chiefly as the preserve of established elites living in a small number of
nations, it is obvious that the enormous gap which such an arrangement has
already created between the world's rich and poor will only continue to
widen, with the disastrous consequences for the world's economy already
noted. Indeed, if most of humankind continue to be regarded mainly as
users of products of science and technology created elsewhere, then
programs ostensibly designed to serve their needs c