BIG SCIENCE CONFERENCE

Evening Star, Issue 21819, 7 September 1934, Page 7

BIG SCIENCE CONFERENCE

FAMOUS PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS KNOWLEDGE GROWS-HUMAN NATURE REMAINS UNCHANGED (Brltiib Official Wireless.) Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright RUGBY, September 6. (Received September 7, at noon.) About 1,500 visiting scientists are taking part in the meetings of the British Association 1 for the Advancement dl Science. 1 1 ; 1 ' 1 . Before delivering his presidential address, Sir James Jeans, the eminent astronomer, read a message of greeting from the King, in which His Majesty expressed Ins unabated interest in the meeting, and his confidence that their investigations into the manifold problems confronting present-day scientists would continue to be productive of results which would benefit mankind. Replying to those who attribute most of our national woes, including unemployment and the danger of war, to the recent rapid advance in scientific knowledge, Sir James Jeans drew a picture of the decay into which the nation that called a halt _ to science would fall in all its activities, but pointed out that, while in respect of knowledge each generationstood on the shoulders of its predecessor, in human nature both stood on the same ground. These were hard facts, which could not be altered, and which they must admit might wreck civilisation. If there was an avenue of escape, it lay, not in the direction of less science, but of more. 1