The Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 1922. SCIENCE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 17 June 1922, Page 4

The Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 1922. SCIENCE

TAKING a broad and general, view, it may be asserted with confidence that the civilization of the present period is the highest in the world’s history. The great civilisations of the past—Cretan, Egyptian, Babylonian, Grecian, Boman have all been remarkable along some special tineas Greece in art and Borne in legislation—but in the present civilisation owes its eminence to a something which permeates and invigorates all lines of human activities. That something is science. Science, and the scientific spirit and method. It is not intended to claim

that science was unknown under prc-| vious civilisations. Science, of a sort, there lias always been, but in the past she was hampered, bound, confined within narrow limits, driven, 100 often, to harbour with associates of dis-j repute, as astronomy with astrology,; or chemistry with alchemy. But at. last, after the lung years of pupilage 1 and disparagement, science has come to her own. Yet, not altogether come, hut fast coming. Every day announces some Iresli triumph, and each forward stop makes the next. step easier. j And what is this science: J This! wonder-worker This builder and: upholder of highest civilisations : j | Something mysterious Something marvellousF Something abstruse and erudite; something profoundly recon-j ditc? Not any of these; Science is! simply exact knowledge. i But how to obtain this exact know-j ledge? How to winnow the real from] the apparent?—-the grains of fact from the chaff of error? There is hut one unquestioned method—observation. Experiment, which Lillies so i largely in all scientific work, is oh- j servation under control; it is the 1 observing of what happens under pre-j pared conditions. It is often the only | possible method of observing, Imt.itxJ evidence is always of lesser value than that of direct observation under uncontrolled conditions. Observation, then, ceaseless gathering of proved facts, infinite patience and never-end-ing search for the real—that is the method of science, the way to exact knowledge. Science has no creed. She dare not formulate one. ’When all knowledge shall have been attained, when every; fact shall be known, then will she set I out her faith, her faith which will need no faith. She has no creed; nor does she put any faith in authority. Her Newtons, her Darwins, her Haeckels, her Pasteurs speak only with such authority as their facts may warrant. It is all a question of evidence, and, at any time fuller evidence may mean; the abandonment of beliefs held for! generations. For the scientist must! follow the facts, let them lead him whither they may. But though science has helped so enormously in the betterment of the race it in no way follows that its primary aim is an economic one. Work carried out purely for economic purposes is the lowest grade of scientific activity. In kind, if not in degree, it differs little from that liteiatnio which busies itself in producing lyrical puffs for patent medicines, or that art which spends itself in pictorial glorification of somebody’s soap or) shoe-blacking: it is the trade of • science. But the science of science is that which dedicates itself first and last to the ascertaining of truth. Yet, it is not to be thought that such an ideal has behind it no regard for progress or the future of the race On the contrary, it is an ideal stripped of all selfishness, an ideal winch recognises that it is only ignorance that hinders progress, that every fad discovered, every truth travel c ~ « * a foothold gamed on that. U * path which is the race’s destiny. 1 exact knowledge is truth, which there is nothing higher.