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Hokitika Guardian, 12 March 1938, Page 4

“Can science tell the whole truth?” was the subject of a lecture delivered to the Manchester Institute of Chemis try by Professor A. D. Ritchie, professor of philosophy at Manchester University. “When a witness in a Court of law swears to tell the truth the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” Professor Ritcliie declared, “he begins with the most wholesale lie that anyone could tell. One cannot tell the whole truth without introducing fiction. The man of science confines himself to the humbler but necessary task of . telling only part of the truth in order to avoid having to tell lies.” The essentially piecemeal and abstract character of scientific procedure necessitated this limitation, lie went on. The scientist must tackle problems one by one, taking some things for granted and ignoring others as irrelevant until something cropped up which compelled aim to revise his provisional assumptions. Further, he could only investigate what was repeatable, general, and common to all observers; that is to say, he must give up the quest for mi-* whole truth in order to grasp a par.t. Science differed from history in that it must ignore remarkable individual experiences and particular aspects ot general . experiences. The denial of any reality beyond the facts of individual experience and the concepts b.v which they were correlated in general ■terms was difficult to refute, Professor Ritchie concluded; hut many of the -scientific theories later confirmed by ! observation i could neVer 1 Rdve been formulated if the possibility of scientific truth had not in the first place been assumed, aind that was at least an indirect justification for the com-mon-sense view.