SECRETS OF SCIENCE

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 December 1926, Page 8

SECRETS OF SCIENCE

(By Professor

Julian Huxley.)

f The annual meeting of the British Association is always the occasion for a good deal of comment —comment 3 which is sometimes puzzled and some--1 times frankly amused. So much of . scientific investigation lies in fields 3 at first sight remote from everyday . human interest that many of its sub--3 jects are bound ati first sight; to seem - merely funny. What could be more laughter-pro-r yoking than learned papers with titles I such as “The Thyroid Gland of the • Hibernating Hedgehog,” ‘‘The Inherit--3 ance of Reduplicated Legs in the 3 Fruit-fly,” or “The Effect of X-rays on the Length of Life of the Beetle Tri--1 bolium Uonfusum”? But such subjects are only funny when we look at them from outside, without an understanding of their • background and of the way in which all knowledge is inter-connected. t For instance, the hedgehog during I hibernation enters into a very peculiar physiological state, a study of which £ has thrown much light on the working r of the ductless glands (which, as .' everyone knotfs, are necessary for health aflid proper /growth). The > fruit-fly happens to be an ideal animal , for the study of heredity; aiid, as a ' matter of fact, the practice of plant 1 and animal breeding is already alter- ■ ing under the influence of the know- • ledge gained from this tiny insect. 1 lil* science you never know what is going to be of importance. When the microscope became perfected men spent their lives cutting every tissue of the bodies of other men and of animals into slices, and looking at them under the microscope. Among other things they found that the pancreas or sweetbread contained not one main type of cell, as is usual in glands, but two. Not a very epoch-making discovery, you will say, but out of it there grew the discovery of insulin and the cure of diabetes! The .ordinary citizen considers that to devote one's life to catching insects and describing their little life histories is a regrettable waste of time and energy; but the knowledge thus gained is becoming of ever greater importance. Let us take but one example. The prickly pear, introduced into Australia, became almost as grreat a curse as the rabbit. Nothing seemed to stop its spread. But the insect men have come to the rescue. They have found insects which will attack the prickly pear, but will eat nothing else, even under stress of starvation. By introducing these insects they are abating the scourge. To perform such a feat, it is absolutely necessary that scores of patient workers should previously have devoted themselves Io the minute description of ,the different kinds of insects (of which we already know about half a. million ■) in order that we may be sure which species we are dealing with. What could be more silly, says the “practical’’ man than to see an ablebodied human being making frog’s muscles twitch by touching them with

various metals, or running after insects and pinning them in a cabinet and giving them iong Latin names, like Galiani, or dropping stones of unequal size from a tower, like Galileo, to see whether the one fell faster than the other I But all our electric light and power grew out of Galiani’s experiments: the protection of our crops and our persons from disease depends on our knowledge of insects; and every time a big gun is fired, or the nautical almanac consulted (to mention but two examples), we are building on Galileo’s simple test and the ideas that he reaped from it. The first principle of scientific method is the verification of ideas by appeal to the facts of nature. You can always devise a test which shall say yes or no to any particular question you .put; and science consists largely in making these tests. The plain citizen is by no means uninterested in knowledge for its own sake ; but it has to make an obvious appeal such as that of the fossil Dinosaur eggs discovered in thje Gobi desert, or that of radium continuously

ft- emitting energy, or of a new extinct ie ancestral human skeleton. e- What is difficult for him to realise is d the thrill which comes from pure in:s tellcctual construction, a thrill like 1(1 that experienced before a ‘ great work y of art. 0 The man of science, when his work ® leads him on to see some new theory li or general idea, which he then pro- } ceeds to test by experiment, combines (1 the pleasures of art with those of the chase. He has the joy of creating and he has also the excitement, mingled with hard work and frequent disappointment, of hunting hard fact to its lair. e The public can co-operate with the r man of science in a number of ways h They can respect his desire to know n for the sake of knowing, and just as e they respect the artist’s desire for v beauty and for expression for their •. own sakes. They must learn to respect the i- method of laborious verification by experiment, and of placing all evidence >- on record. Without that the most ;• brilliant ideas will never bear fruit. & And they can remember that the seni- sational “discovery” and the brilliant -• practical invention are only incidents f in the necessarily slow and continuous activity of science all over the world. r Finally, we should do well to remind J ourselves that although science can and does produce results of the very * greatest practical utility, this is not * the reason for which most men of science devote their lives to Her service. The reason that drives most of them to laborious days in laboratory j- and library is simply that they want to T understand nature. Like children, I they must for ever be asking ques--1 tioris." 3 We have only to look back on the f history of science to see that the most 1 important advances are always made , because men wanted to know how and . why things Jiiappened, and not bei cause they had a definite practical end ’ in view. You cannot look for new , practical applications until you have your new principle/ or new idea, and ? you will not find a new general idea : unless you are looking for general * ideas. ! Dalton was looking for general ideas about the way chemical combination took place; his atomic theories made possible a development of chemical in- * dustry which no amount of purely “practical” research could have ’ achieved. Mendel wanted to know how ’ inherited characters were transmitted from parent to offspring; the principles he discovered are being applied to the improvement of plant and animal breeds in a way impossible be*ore - z Luckily, however, the world is a rational one; and one of the proofs of its reasonableness is that pure knowledge pursued for its own sake is always in the long run capable of being harnessed to the practical uses of every day.