NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21314, 15 October 1932, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

RELIGION AND SCIENCE Preaching in York Minster at a service attended by many members of the British Association, the Dean of Exeter, Dr. W. a R. Matthews said the Church should recognise more frankly and completely that scientific research might, bp a spiritual and religious activity. Too often organised religion, secure in its inherited dogmas, had feared those elements in the full life of the spirit and had condemned them. " Permit me to say on the other side," he continued, " that science needs to become more fully conscious of its vocation and to realise the implications of its spiritual nature. The inevitable specialisation of modern science threatens to weaken its power as a spiritual activity. Perhaps there are some theologians who resent the incursions of scientific men into the realms of religious and philosor phical thoughts.. If so, I have never met them. We are thankful for the writings of such men as Jeans, Eddington, Whitehead and many others who have advanced our knowledge of the central problems of existence and have given us the results of their reflections on the spiritual ideals, hopes and beliefs of men. We cannot havo too much of this kind of co-operation, but I must be allowed to say that there are other scientific men whose essays on theology justly cause indignation in the minds of religious people. There are some who make slap-dash pronouncements on the great problems of religion with, it would seem, little reflection. It is surely deplorable when scientific men leave their scientific methods behind and speak as oracles on subjects which they have not studied." NO LIGHT BY DOGMATISING " We shall gain nn light, from tho*; who dogmatise about religion, never having read a book of modern theology, and who attempt, to determine, grave issues of spiritual philosophy, equipped only with tho expert, knowledge of mathematics or psychology and the memory of that version of religion which they learned from their grandmothers." said Dr. Matthews. "For science thero is no finality. Most of the books which were written on theology 100 years ago arc dead, but they are not so dead as those which were written on science. One thing is certain, that in a generation all our text books will be superseded. Tho power of the human mind has no assignable limit. So far as the scientific intellect is concerned, we can determine no bounds for the progress of tho human, mind. Our thirst for knowledge can never be satisfied by the endless advance of science. There are moments when we wish we could rise beyond partial truths to the truth, beyond the endless quest to the endless possession. Here at any rate is the unchanging message of rational religion. Tho spiritual end and values which we pursue are steps by which we may rise to God and signs that He is really there." LOCATING MINERALS Geophysical methods of examining mineral riches of the earth were discussed by Professor Rankine. at 0110 of the group gatherings of the British Association. He excluded "divining" from his consideration, because although some scientific people might believe in it, its modus operandi had never been explained and norip of its apparatus had been established on an acceptable scientific basis. "It comes as something of a shock, even though we do not doubt the universal law of gravitation, to see for the first time a small mass of gold being attracted by a neighbouring lead sphere a. few inches in diameter," lie said, "With a torsion balance at our disposal the same becomes commonplace, and is indicative of tho great power of these instruments for geophysical purposes. Accumulated evidence from the field confirms this view. There is convincing proof that extensive underground features, such as salt' domes, limestone anticlines and synclines, rock faults, and deposits of hematite or of brown coal, produce, if not too deeply burled, or masked by complicating irregularities, gravitational disturbances large enough to lead to their delineation by means of tho torsion balance." . . . The seismic method, to some extent, was replacing tho gravitational method, partly because of . the. greater speed at which it could be applied to the survey of any district. The basis of the method was tho same as that underlying investigations of the. propagation of earthquake shocks, artificial and controlled explosions. Portable seismographs and time recorders were the tools of the method. The magnetic method was the simplest and least costly, and consisted in measuring, with suitable portable magnetometers, 'local variations of the earth's magnetic field.