PURE SCIENCE AND THE IDEA OF THE HOLY 



seventeenth-century economic life, which, as Hessen^ showed in a 

 classical essay, directed the attention of Newton into specific channels. 

 Works such as those of Singer,^ Pledge,^ and Crowther* give many 

 more such instances. Genetics, to pass to biology, did not originate out 

 of pure rationalistic thought of Greek type, but in close association 

 with problems of plant breeding, in the garden of an abbey. Nor are 

 the departments of science themselves in watertight compartments; 

 the observations of botanists gave rise to the physical chemistry of 

 membrane permeability, and the study of monomolecular films 

 would perhaps never have arisen without the biochemistry of lipoidal 

 materials. 



The fears expressed regarding pure science really imply that social 

 forces external to scientists may attempt to confine their activities to 

 "applied" problems of short-term scope. Were this to happen any- 

 where it would indeed be a calamity. It would be killing the goose 

 that lays the golden eggs. The development of scientific thought, 

 proceeding according to its own inner logic, and free to direct its 

 attention to whatever facts may seem relevant, is the only guarantee 

 that discoveries of fundamental importance to humanity will be made. 

 Societies which sought to save their life by narrow scientific concen- 

 tration on short-term problems, would certainly lose it. But this 

 attitude is to be found neither in the democracies nor in that bugbear 

 of Polanyi's, the Soviet Union. We may illustrate the Russian marxist 

 policy in these matters by one very striking example, namely the 

 support which has been given in Russia to the sciences of experi- 

 mental morphology and embryology. These subjects are of quite 

 fundamental importance for biological thought since they elucidate 

 the laws of the coming-into-being of organisms, the fixation of fates, 

 the morphogenetic hormones, the onset of differentiation by function, 

 etc., etc. But they stand at the furthest remove from likely practical 

 applications, either in war or peace. The two countries where they 

 were most extensively studied, up to about 1920, were America (for 

 invertebrates) and Germany (for vertebrates) ; England, unfortunately, 

 has never had a vigorous embryological tradition. But during the past 

 ten years these important subjects have almost ceased to exist in 

 Germany, while Russia, building on substantial previous foundations, 



1 B. Hessen, "The Social and Economic Roots of Newton's Principia" in Science 

 at the Cross-roads (Kniga, London, 1931). 



2 C. Singer, A Short History of Science (Oxford, 1941). 

 ^ H. T. Pledge, Science since l5oo (London, 1939). 



* J. G. Crowther, The Social Relations of Science (London, 1941). 



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