The Press WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 1937. The Advancement of Science

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21989, 13 January 1937, Page 8

The Press WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 1937. The Advancement of Science

It is a long time since the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science assembled in this Dominion, as it did yesterday in Auckland; and the event is welcome. It is a commonplace assertion thatmodern civilisation rests, upon' the discoveries and applications of science; it is almost another commonplace that science, the friend, is also science, the enemy, which threatens to destroy its own creation. But the truth of the second is subject to the tremendous qualification that the threat issues ijrom the possible abuse of science, from the lag of human wisdom behind knowledge, from the large failure, in particular, to redress economic and social conceptions, standards, and aims as new opportunities appeal and corresponding dangers demand; and the blame for this lies, of course, not on science or men of science, but, in the direct contrary, on all that is unscientific or anti-scientific in human nature and institutions. The remedy is not less science but more, a wider diffusion of —at least—respect for science, and above all, a higher degree of that form of respect for it which is willingness to govern'and be governed by the light of science. A scientific congress has its obvious function in assisting, among scientists, the development and exchange of ideas. A less obvious one, but probably not less valuable, is that it assist 5 the community to see a little more clearly the scope of science, the range of its contacts with the complex but everyday system of life, and so its social and political importance. Nobody can study the programme before the delegates at Auckland without drawing himself clear, to some degree, from the error of belittling science by giving it boundaries too narrow; and this error must, be escaped if science is to establish its proper control over society and, at the same time, be properly controlled as the servant of society. New countries like Australia and New Zealand are especially in danger of equating science with, roughly, those branches of it which serve t" air immediate needs, industrial and developmental; other branches are overlooked or neglected. But the error is not " peculiar to new countries, it is only more prominent" in them'; and the world is the poorer and the unhappier for it. " Science "is often frustrated," said Professor Julian Huxley, not long ago, " or diverted, or distorted, " or not applied, or not done properly, or not "done at*all." His examples were numerous and depressing. In its applications to agriculture, to housing, to public health,, to economic problems, to education and social, organisation, for instance, science is visibly thwarted of the successes it has earned, or handicapped in pursuing greater success. In England, of the money spent on research, " about half or more is " devoted to industrial research and pure re- " search in physics and chemistry, which under- " lie that; next, about half of this amount would "be spent on research on war; a good way ''below that comes research in agriculture and "the branches of biology underlying that; still " further down comes research oh medicine and " health and the underlying science of physiology; and finally come social science and " psychology, with an infinitesimal amount of "money spent on them: as they say in the racing " papers, they 'also ran.'" Achievement, in science, has been lopsided; effort is still lopsided. On physico-chemical lines, progress has been and is enormous; on biological and social lines it remains far short of the desirable and possible extent. Again the blame is not with the scientist but with the character of the age and environment in which he works. What it has cramped is the social function of science; and if that is to be fully exercised, every community, humanity as a whole, must learn to widen and co-ordinate its ideas of science, to apply it more consistently, not piecemeal and to cross purposes, and to take longer views in making demands upon it. The necessity of learning the lesson, of course, is that if is profoundly dangerous to limit science to external nature and to leave human affairs and relations to be "governed unscientifically. Less objectively than they might, but nevertheless plainly, the Australian and New Zealand scientists in Auckland are exhibiting the truth of this to society.