SCIENCE CONFERENCE

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 September 1934, Page 7

SCIENCE CONFERENCE

SIR J. JEANS’ ADDRESS. [BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.] RUGBY, September 6. About 1500 visiting scientists are taking part in the meetings of the British Association for the advancement of Science. Before delivering his presidential address, Sir James Jeans, the eminent astronomer, read a message of greeting from the King, in which His Majesty expressed his unabated interest in the meeting,, and 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 attributed most of our national woes, including unemployment and the danger of war, to the recent rapid advance of scientific knowledge, Sir James Jeans drew a picture of the decay into which a nation that called a halt to science would fall in all its activities, but pointed out that while in respect of knowledge each generation stood 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.