Gerard • The Role of Pure Science 



fear of nature and the here-and-now 

 prejudices of the group. Think of the 

 aboriginal Gods— lurking in animals 

 and trees, in earth, winds and waters; 

 cruel, demanding, all-powerful; quick 

 to destroy, difficult to propitiate; ren- 

 dering the future insecure and the 

 present restricted— that peopled the 

 primitive imagination. Recall the na- 

 tive, taught by missionaries to plow 

 deep, who, alone in his tribe, grew 

 grain despite a drought and whose torn 

 off limbs were scattered on the field 

 to repel the Evil One. Think of our 

 own recent history— the heretics tor- 

 tured, the were-wolves burned and 

 witches drowned, the sick exorcised; 

 largely in good faith. The Koran was 

 only recently printed in Islam, for it 

 was blasphemy to touch the word 

 "Allah" with pig bristles. 



Second, intelligent behavior is 

 marked by tolerance. The new is 

 neither fatuously accepted nor blindly 

 damned. Decisions are reached after 

 due instruction in and evaluation of 

 the facts, pro and con; and action, 

 while not always correct, is rational in 

 the light of the evidence and, since ac- 

 tion generates new evidence, it is auto- 

 matically self-corrective. 



Third, intelligent behavior does not 

 confuse the symbol with the thing. 

 This requires some explanation. Man 

 tries to understand nature, for his 

 pleasure and profit. But nature is a 

 blooming buzzing confusion of semi- 

 discrete units and systems in a great 

 continuity. Analysis cannot proceed 

 until this is ordered into classes— for 

 logic and science deal with the unique- 

 ness of the individual. 



I have said that education for truth, 

 for a rational behavior, engenders free- 

 dom from superstition and prejudice, 

 inculcates tolerance and the open 

 mind, and brings discrimination of the 

 symbol from the symbolized. I credit 

 science, pure science, with such prog- 

 ress as civilization has made in this di- 



295 



lection and maintain that in its charge 

 lies further advance. On what grounds 

 is so much claimed for science? Conk- 

 lin has summed the case up admir- 

 ably, ". . . as an educational discipline 

 there are no other studies [than 

 science] that distinguish so sharply 

 truth from error, evidence from opin- 

 ion, reason from emotion; none that 

 teach a greater reverence for truth nor 

 inspire more laborious and persistent 

 search for it. Great is philosophy, for 

 it is the synthesis of all knowledge, but 

 if it is true philosophy it must be built 

 upon science, which is tested knowl- 

 edge." 



If our sacred cows of belief and 

 convention cannot stand the light of 

 reason they are sickly animals. Do you 

 maintain that science has undermined 

 the foundations of ethics, I reply, 

 "Only of false ethics." There is no 

 conflict between the true and the good 

 any more than between the true and 

 the beautiful. Whichever idols have 

 crumbled with the growth of science 

 were made of clay, and it is well to have 

 cleaned out the debris. Religion is 

 struggling to establish new ethical 

 values; surely science, which has faith 

 in truth and honesty, in patience and 

 order, strains at her side. Perhaps, even, 

 the new ethics will stem from science 

 directly. 



Many of you, I am certain, are now 

 about at the bursting point of indig- 

 nation with my elegiac mood. "Man, 

 alive," you would say, "stop talking 

 like an evangelical Pollyanna and look 

 at some facts yourself. Science has been 

 taught in increasing intensity for a cen- 

 tury or two and you have already ad- 

 mitted that we still are clouded in 

 prejudice, intolerant to an extreme de- 

 gree, and regularly misled by words. 

 And you can't wriggle out of it by say- 

 ing that science has not adequately 

 reached the masses for we know any 

 number of scientists \^'ho are as egre- 

 gious asses as the rest of us when they 



