PURE SCIENCE AND THE IDEA OF THE HOLY 



of society." Polanyi has elaborated these views in other writings, 

 including a vigorous attack on Soviet Science,^ in which he takes 

 issue with the numerous pleas advanced by J. D. Bernal and Lancelot 

 Hogben in their books for a planned society and a socialised science 

 and medicine. 



Counsel for the defence was the experimental morphologist, C. H. 

 Waddington. He suggested^ that the word "holy" needed closer 

 examination, that its use in the editorial had been to signify "eso- 

 teric," while its use by Polanyi signified "having overwhelming 

 ethical value." No sensible person would deny the tremendous 

 ethical value of the scientific method, or indeed of any of the other 

 basic forms of human experience. But that is not the question. The 

 question concerns rather its social relevance. Only on account of its 

 social relevance does the problem of social control arise. Polanyi 

 spoke of the independence of witness, jury, and judge. "But the 

 witness," commented Waddington, "the jury, and the judge, turn 

 their attention to problems presented to them as being socially im- 

 portant; they are not at liberty to spend the afternoon discussing the 

 sexual habits of Polynesian worms, or whatever else takes their fancy. 

 The editors of Nature were, as I understood them, inviting us to 

 spend more time investigating subjects as banal but as relevant as 

 crimes. Doubtless it is not altogether easy to preserve scientific 

 detachment in such matters; and one can expect that what are generi- 

 cally termed ' powerful interests ' will attempt to influence scientific 

 statements on matters of social consequence. But Professor Polanyi's 

 pessimistic assumption that such influences must always be successful 

 is vitiated by his own example of the persistence of a real and active 

 legal detachment through many centuries of close contact with the 

 turbulent forces of history. It may be urged that the law, though 

 employing the methods of impartiality, is in its content merely the 

 embodiment of the interests of the most powerful social group, and 

 in that most important respect unfree; and it can be argued that a 

 socially directed science, even though free to be critical and objective, 

 would have its attention fixed down to problems chosen for it by 

 social forces outside its control. But, speaking as an embryologist of 



^ "Rights and Duties of Science" in Manchester School of Economic and Social 

 Studies, October, 1939, p. 175. Here he joined hands with A. V. Hill, who made a 

 similar attack, on the occasion of his parliamentary candidature; for this and for my 

 reply, see New Statesman, 1940, pp. 105, 174, 206. See also M. Polanyi's book, The 

 Contempt of Freedom (London, 1940). 



^ Nature, 1941, 147, 206. 



95 



