PERSPECTIVES IN EVOLUTION 



By James Ritchie, M. A., D. Sc. 

 President of the Zoology Section, British Association for the Advancement 



of Science 



"All useless science is an empty boast," Shakespeare is alleged to 

 have said, but he lived before that pernicious cleavage had been made 

 between pure science and economic science, which suggests that the 

 latter is a gold-digger while the former excavates only knowledge. 

 And while we are strongly in favor of those lines of scientific en- 

 deavor which make their first purpose an attack upon the evils that 

 man and his possessions fall heir to in the course of nature, and 

 which aim at easing the human struggle for existence, there are 

 questions of no immediate practical moment to which the inquiring 

 spirit of humanity demands an answer. I do not think Sha,kespeare 

 would have called these recurrent problems "useless science," for the 

 mind of man requires satisfaction as well as his material need. 



It is characteristic of the modern evolution of scientific method 

 that as the zoologist becomes more and more engrossed in a particular 

 problem within the restricted field in which he specializes, his oppor- 

 tunities recede of gaging the effect of discoveries in other fields upon 

 the general problems of life. Even if he desires to keep in touch with 

 such inquiries, whom is he to follow? Juvenal declared that "Nature 

 never says one thing and Science another," and while that is true of 

 science in the abstract, it can scarcely be true of the purveyors of 

 exact knowledge so-called, the scientists, for they speak with many 

 and often discordant tongues. 



There is another reason which suggests that a restatement of some 

 of the great problems may be appropriate on this occasion. Since the 

 British Association last met in Dundee, in 1912, and Sir Peter 

 Chalmers Mitchell addressed this Section upon the need for further- 

 ing the protection of animals whose existence was threatened by the 

 advance of civilization, great progress has been made in many direc- 

 tions. Much has been done, for example, for the cause so com- 



> Address to Section D, Zoology, of the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, Dundee meeting, 1939. Reprinted, slightly revised, by permission of the Associa- 

 tion, from The Advancement of Science, new quarterly series No. 1, October 1939. 



249 



