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Hokitika Guardian, 21 July 1936, Page 4

Scientific research proceeds in evergrowing strength partly form the desire to understand, partly from the urge to improve our conditions of living, and partly from the effort to keep our place among the nations, writes Sir William Bragg, director of the Royal Institution, in the Morning Post/ in an article' on scientific trends. As it does.so, it alters our conceptions of tne world in which we live and of our relations thereto. Because of the sense of a unity in Nature which grows with every fresh acquisition of knowedge, some haye come to regard the world as a mere machine in which the wheels all gear precisely with their neighbours and the action proceeds to a predestined end. It is true that, in our laboratories, physical, chemical and biological cause Qnd effect are linked together in an ordered regularity. IN a. ture, so to speak, makes no mistakes in physics and chemistry. But there are other laboratories than those built by the architect. We hav e opportunities of observing the hopes and fears, likes and dislikes, successes and fallings, ideals and limitation of our fellows and of our’selves, of men now and in past times. From’ these also we add to our store of knowledge and draw conclusions. If these seem sometime to contradict conclusions drawn from other sources, we have to rememoer that our minds are surely imperfect.