THEORY OF TRUTH

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2313, 4 December 1925, Page 2

THEORY OF TRUTH

Thore have been many expressions of disappointment at the character of the proceedings at the last meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. A writer in the New Statesman says: “My impression is based upon a perusal of the official report of the fourteen presidential addresses delivered in the various sections. The tact wnlch seems to emerge is that in the most important branches of human knowledge which it professes to explore science is standing still. Under a mass of now material secured by the most patient and able research, it seeks to conceal its fundamental ignorance of the nature of universe. It is not, of course, to be blamed for its ignorance; it can be blamed, if at all .only for its failure to admit and face that ignorance. It consoles itself with easy assumptions to which it clings, such as that ■•progress’ is real, that the earth is growing colder, that Darwin has explained in principle, if not in detail, the physical origin ol man. My complaint, or criticism, is not that the Darwinian hypothesis has not been upset, but that the majority of biologists have ceased to regard it as a hypothesis and tend to treat at as a fundamental dogma. Darwin explained. or purported to explain, how favourable variations might be ‘selected” by a porlectly natural process, but he was unable —and acknowledged his inability—to explain how and wliy such variations occurred, ilia theory offers no plausible explanation at ail, for instance, of the evolution of such an organ as the eye. (Another assumption, still more universally accepted in scientific circles ,is that the earth and the moon —and the aun and the planets too for that matter —are cooling, and therefore dying bodies. For this assumption there is no firm basis whatever. If we wore to assert —and this has been asserted —that the earth and the moon are growing not cooler out hotter, and that the latter may .presently be expected to develop an organic life of its own ,tho whole British association could not adduce a single fact which would unquestionably refute our theory. I wish only to suggest that scientific workers do not sufficiently acknowledge their vast ignorance—of which, »if they recognised it more frankly, they would have no reason to be ashamed.”