October 6, 1923] 



NATURE 



507 



Science and Progress in Australia.^ 



By Sir David Orme Masson, K.B.E., F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry, University of Melbourne. 



N underlying motive of all international con- 

 ferences is to contribute something towards 

 lat mutual understanding — that sympathy — which 

 llone can preserve the peace of nations ; but each has 

 ilso its own specific work to do. The task of the Pan- 

 pacific Science Congress is to discuss those scientific 

 )roblems which are of special interest in the Pacific 

 fkrea., to direct attention to them and to lay plans for 

 future research. It is hoped that all the participating 

 countries may benefit ; but I think there are two good 

 reasons why Australia may look to profit most. In the 

 first place it is here that the Congress meets and here, 

 therefore, that its deliberat'ons will attract most 

 attention from the public and those higher authorities 

 that have it in their power to aid or discourage any co- 

 operative ventures for the public good. In the second 

 place, Australia, in respect to scientific effort, has more 

 to learn from the older and greater nations — from the 

 Mother Country, from America, from Japan, from 

 Holland — than they have to learn from her. 



This island continent is as large as the United States 

 but has a population only about one-twentieth as great. 

 It is a continent of huge distances and vast empty 

 spaces, held by a people of nearly pure British stock, 

 who would not run two persons to the square mile if 

 evenly distributed over its surface. Collected on and 

 near its coastal fringe, they have done much to open 

 up the resources of the land and have learnt much 

 about its difficulties. To carry on the work towards 

 complete development, overcoming obstacles and 

 gradually increasing the area of settlement, is the proud 

 ambition voiced in the nation's motto " Advance 

 Australia." Progress, full utilisation of the great land 

 we occupy, is a duty we owe to ourselves ; but clearly 

 our obligation is even more liinding as trustees for the 

 world, present and future. 



Many things are needed to ensure successful progress 

 — the triumphant fulfilment of Australia's destiny. 

 Statesmanship of course ; but as to that we may have 

 .faith and confidence. Man-power — a vast increase of 

 )pulation ; and towards that end even now the 

 forts of our rulers here and in Britain are turned, 

 "utilising and directing hither the migration wave from 

 an overcrowded land where food is scarce : a movement 

 which has arisen since the War and recalls the greater 

 hunger migrations that went to make history when the 

 world was young. But apart from these there is a 

 need as pressing, as fundamental, though I think it is 

 not so generally recognised of the people. That is the 

 need of science. 



Science is nothing more nor less than the knowledge 

 and understanding of Nature's laws. To a law of 

 Nature there can be no exception. The apparently 

 abnormal is seen to be normal when the laws at work 

 are better understood. There is no happening in the 

 Universe except in conformity with natural law. No 

 human act can successfully run counter to it. Any 

 such attempt is foredoomed to failure. Man cannot 

 '■ fight Nature " ; he can but utilise its law-governed 



' From the presidential address delivered to the Second Pan-Pacific 

 Sricnce Congrcs-; at Melbourne on August 13. 



NO. 2814, VOL. I 12] 



processes, profiting by the result. There is, indeed, 

 no true distinction between what we call " artificial " 

 (man-made) and " natural " (Nature-made). An arti- 

 ficial ruby is either not a ruby at all, and therefore mis- 

 named, or it is the outcome of Nature's edict that 

 certain substances, raised to a certain temperature, 

 will fuse, and, on cooling, will crystallise in a certain 

 manner. All that the artificer has done is to gather 

 the right materials and to adjust the environment to 

 the necessary temperatures ; and, for this last purpose, 

 he has but utilised Nature's infallible laws of chemical 

 combination and of energy. His ruby is, in truth, as 

 much a natural product as those man finds ready-made 

 in the earth. Let me cite a more important case. 

 Sir Ernest Rutherford is commonly said to have caused 

 the artificial disintegration of certain of the lighter 

 atoms, such as those of nitrogen, and their partial 

 transmutation into hydrogen atoms. He is said to 

 have done this by bombarding them with swiftly 

 moving alpha-particles emitted by radio-active material. 

 The facts are true, but the common mode of stating 

 them is misleading. Not Rutherford, but Nature, did 

 the work ; not Rutherford, but Nature, caused the 

 result. Neither the work nor the result was new. 

 What Rutherford did was to arrange the environment 

 so as to render detection of the phenomena possible ; 

 then to observe and then to interpret Nature's deeds. 

 Radium and other radio-active matter have been 

 shooting out swift-moving alpha-particles, and these 

 have been bombarding other atoms and causing occa- 

 sional transmutations, since time was young ; only we 

 did not know of it until recently. Rutherford's dis- 

 covery is one of the most important events in the 

 history of science, and none but a man with genius 

 such as his for searching Nature's secrets could have 

 made it. We owe to him many other discoveries of 

 first-rate importance and surpassing interest ; but even 

 he can do no more than study Nature, follow out her 

 processes, and elucidate her laws. 



In more obviously utilitarian fields the same story 

 must be told. The sheep-breeder who gradually and 

 patiently improves the quality or the quantity of his 

 wool and thus raises the value of his flock is not the 

 main agent in the process. He merely acts as Nature's 

 henchman and her immutable laws of heredity do the 

 rest. So it is with the cultivator of improved varieties 

 of wheat — rust-resisting or what not — or of varieties 

 of beet that provide a greatly enhanced yield of sugar. 

 Is all this a mere truism ? I think not ; for there 

 are many signs that mankind at large does not yet 

 realise that everything that happens in this universe is 

 the result of the working of natural laws and that the 

 best that man can do is to study them and turn the 

 knowledge of them to his profit. One is tempted here 

 to ask the old question : how many utterly futile man- 

 made laws have been passed by parliaments, fore- 

 doomed to become dead letters or to be rescinded, 

 because they tried to run counter to the complex and 

 incompletely understood natural laws of economics or 

 social science ? 



But, if the principle I have enunciated be a truism, 



