BIOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 429 



Indeed a study of the historical background of surgery invokes in the mind 

 of the medical scientist a distrust of the public." The doctor cites among 

 other examples, the Edict of Tours (1165) declaring surgery not respecta- 

 ble. But that Edict was not the work of the common man. It was a product 

 of the leaders of the Church. 



On the other hand, the defeatists among us, noting the conspicuous, 

 though superficial, role of science in modern life, occasionally see in science 

 and the scientific method the very root of some of our modern ills. Thus 

 the leaders of a little college on our Atlantic seaboard have boldly under- 

 taken to rectify a Harvard University educational failure, by providing 

 "conditions for liberahzing and humanizing science." And this the college 

 hopes to achieve by the "strategy of taking specialists in the sciences and 

 re-educating them in the liberal arts." We are not told what to do for, or 

 do with, the people who were "educated in the liberal arts" before they be- 

 came specialists in science. Maybe these unfortunates are acephalic satraps 

 of Satan, or just dead and do not know it. I think among the "persons who 

 can produce fine things" are the men of science, and among "the fine 

 things" are new facts about man in health and in disease, new facts about 

 the universe, new facts about the nature of life and matter, new under- 

 standing and new powers of control of the forces of nature. 



Many world events in recent years have made some assert that worth- 

 while human society cannot persist or prevail without the perennial su- 

 premacy of deceit and greed, violence and war. Others question whether 

 these very antitheses of the scientific method can persist side by side with 

 science and the necessary human qualities that go with the method of 

 science. Deceit, violence, and war have certainly been with us before the 

 dawn of history as a part of the "struggle for existence," while science and 

 the scientific method are of a much more recent vintage. It is also true that 

 the "struggle for existence" in smaller groups such as the family, the tribe, 

 or the nation ultimately curbed, at least in part, both deceit and greed, 

 violence and war. Can such curbing be achieved on a larger scale or is it 

 desirable that such curbing of man's past drives be achieved in the interest 

 of the future welfare and progress of man? So far as I can see there is only 

 one answer to this question, and that answer is given both by history and 

 by the primary interest of society. To refer again to the resolution of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science: "Science can flour- 

 ish only where there is peace and intellectual freedom." Are intellectual 

 freedom and peace the desiderata for man? If this is so, there is no funda- 

 mental conflict between science and society, as I view society of the future. 



The evident failure of modern science measurably to influence human 

 drives and conduct, individually, nationally, internationally, are probably 

 to be sought in three factors: (i) the character of our prevailing educa- 

 tion. Our prevailing education, starting in the home and in the church, 

 in the grade school and the high school, and extending into the college is 



