SCIENCE TO THE FORE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 7, 20 October 1941, Page 4

SCIENCE TO THE FORE.

The tragedy of the present struggle is that the ends for which people are striving food, work, security and freedom —are gifts which science has put within reach of all, says Professor J. D. Bernal, writing in “World Review.” The resources, the knowledge and the ability to build a new world are there, but instead we have danger and bloodshed, want and misery. If people could understand at least something of the possibilities which science offers, they would become more reasonably impatient of their present state, and more capable of changing it. For this, science needs to be expounded, and expounded in a new way, which emphasises its relation to a changing -world. It is no use any longer attempting to present science as a series of pictures of the beauties or the mysteries of the universe and of nature. People have had enough of that already; it belongs to a time when individual and social security and the general running of society could be taken for granted. Indeed, with the idea of the pure scientists’ the public is very justifiably irritated with the idea of the pure scientists’ leisurely and secluded search after minute and remote things, when the world all around is being bombed to pieces; especially as the aeroplanes, guns, tanks and other engines of destruction seem to be the most noticeable products of scientific research. But in any case the scientists themselves are no longer anxious to present a merely academic picture of a disinterested search after truth combined with a sublime indifference to the results of discoveries. Science has long been much more -than this. It has become an integral part of productive industry and agriculture, it maintains health; it is increasingly involved in business administration and govern ment. The methods and ideas of science are the dominant forms of thought and action in our time.