THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE, AND 

 WHAT BARS THE WAY 1 



THE future of science is a fit subject for the con- 

 sideration of the Aberdeen University Scientific 

 Society in these days when everything is being cast 

 into the crucible of war to be consumed or refined. 

 I have added to the title, "and what bars the way," 

 because I believe that active opposition has still to 

 be overcome before science takes its rightful place in 

 the Scottish universities. Indeed, one has only to 

 contrast the growth and power of science in the 

 outside world, not merely the world of things and 

 facts, but equally the world of ideas, with the position 

 it holds relatively to the so-called classical studies in 

 the ancient universities, with the possible exception 

 of Cambridge, or, again, to contrast these with the 

 new universities that have sprung up in England and 

 Wales, to realise that the older institutions have lost 

 whatever capacity they may once have had for 

 intellectual leadership, and toil painfully behind the 

 times, a clog rather than a stimulus to the coming 

 task of national reconstruction. The period of out- 

 spoken, honest opposition and hostility to science of 

 a couple of generations ago on the part of those 

 whose most ancient and cherished beliefs had been 

 rudely overthrown by the growth of our knowledge 

 of external nature, has given place to a far more 



1 Presidential Address to the Aberdeen University Scientific 

 Society, 3rd November 1916. 



06 



