GIFTS OF SCIENCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22210, 10 September 1935, Page 6

GIFTS OF SCIENCE

NOT ALL BLESSINGS EFFECTS ON CIVILISATION "Civilisation is not a matter of comfort, and man's life does not depen on the number of electric-buttons h 0 can press." This was the view advanced bv Professor F. Sinclaire in an address to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury. "The Case Against Science" was the title of his lecture. Professor Sinclaire contended that some gifts of science were two-edge weapons. Every gain through science had brought with it a degree of loss, an instance being the innumera deadly weapons of destruction devised. It might be argued that the gifts o science cancelled each other out an that when they were totalled up tn sum was nothing. It might eve P,. contended that there was something like a debit balance. , Scientists were slew to admit tn jiilt for the evil which had been don through science, he said. It was P 0? " sible that applied science was regarde only as a hohby or a sport, ana tn would almost appear to be the .vie in some quarters. There was a formi - able case against applied science, an it was not true just to say applied science had benefited huniani y»