time: the refreshing river 



has more than taken Germany's place, and America has benefited by 

 a large number of first-rate morphologists exiled from Germany. 



Again, fears have sometimes been entertained that the sciences of 

 evolution, palaeontology and the like, would suffer in a socialist 

 society. But in point of fact, they have a fundamentally important use, 

 the construction and elaboration of that true world-view on which 

 "scientific socialism" determined to base itself, apart from the fact 

 that they are inextricably intertwined with matters of practical use in 

 the ordinary sense. Thus the school of geochemistry for which Russia 

 is famous, headed by Vernadsky,i helped to reveal the course of the 

 earth's evolution as well as the sites of mineral resources. And the 

 unrivalled collection of cultivated plant varieties from all over the 

 world made by the school of Vavilov,^ threw much light on the pre- 

 historic origin and development of agriculture as well as providing 

 unfamiliar and desirable types of plant for practical cultivation. 



All this is a remarkable commentary on Polanyi's fear that "pure" 

 science has been banished from marxist Russia.^ It is a fear without 

 rational basis. 



There is really no distinction between "pure" and "applied" science. 

 The common distinction between science "for its own sake," and 

 science "for its practical usefulness" is unsound.^ Human motivations 



^ See W. Vernadsky, La Biosphere (Paris, 1929). 



2 Now (1942) a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. 



^ A few further words may be added regarding the attacks of Hill and Polanyi on 

 Soviet science. One may grant them that the language of editors of Soviet periodicals 

 has been uninhibited and lacking in old-world courtesy. One cannot but regret the 

 difficulties which individual scientists may have got tliemselves into with the Soviet 

 government, altlaough in the absence of the full facts, any decision on such matters is 

 difficult. One cannot defend the lesser degree of individual liberty which is thought to 

 have prevailed in the Soviet Union during the past twenty years, except by pointing 

 out that the period of dictatorship of the proletariat involved methods of defence 

 unnecessary in the older democratic countries. Such methods were employed in the 

 belief that the Soviet Union would probably be attacked by the fascist powers, a belief 

 now shown to have been only too well founded. Polanyi draws attention to the con- 

 troversies in the Soviet Union on genetics and psycho-analysis. For the formei: the reader 

 is referred to an article (Modern Quarterly, 1938, 1, 369) which shows that far too much 

 has been made of the genetics controversy in this country. As regards psycho-analysis, 

 the remark said to have been made by a psycho-pathologist is worth quoting. "In Russia, 

 people can marry whom they like; that would take away half my practice. They can 

 also divorce whom they like. That would take away the other half." As for Professor 

 Kapitza, who is represented by Professor Polanyi as a haggard political prisoner, he 

 has now (1941) received the highest Soviet decorations and has spoken on the radio to 

 British scientists as the mouthpiece of Soviet physicists. 



* Though still maintained by eminent scientists, e.g. A. G. Tansley in the Herbert 

 Spencer Lecture at Oxford for 1942. 



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