on popular science lectures, 337 



General Observations. 



Ill addition to the replies to the individual questions, some valuable 

 general remarks have been received, and a selection from them is here 

 given. Dr. Alex. Hill, Principal, University College, Southamptou, 

 writes: 'Twenty years' experience as a Gilchrist lecturer has taught 

 me that the success of a popular lecture depends wholly upon organisa- 

 tion. Not once in a score of Gilchrist lectures is there a seat vacant 

 in the largest hall in the town, wherever it may be. A committee is 

 formed long before the Gilchiist lectures are to be given : on it the 

 representatives of all working-class organisations, Y.M.C.A., churches 

 and chapels in the place. Very commonly every ticket for the course 

 is sold before the lectures commence. It is needless to say that the 

 Gilchrist lectures have a high reputation ; but the public has little, if 

 any, knowledge of the qualifications of an individual lecturer. The 

 only chance of drawing an srtisan population to a lecture is to let them 

 have a share of the responsibility of arranging for it, and therefore of 

 securing a large audience. There has been no diminution in interest 

 in popular scientific lectures in my time — say, forty years — but there 

 has been a great falling off in the trouble taken in organising audiences. ' 



Dr. W. B. Burnie, Principal of the Brighton Technical College, 

 says : ' The reasons of success or failure depend on what you want 

 your popular lectures to accomplish. The objects can be : — 



(a) To give a little scientific knowledge to the general public. 



(b) To remove prejudices against scientific work and attempt to 



make the public more sympathetic. 



(c) To interest individuals in scientific work so that they take up 



seriously some branch of science. 

 ' (a) seems to me to have been achieved so far as popular lectures, 

 without effort on the part of the public, can accomplish it. 



(b) seems not able to be accomplished by popular lectures. The 

 numerous people who distrust and dislike science do not attend popular 

 lectures. 



(c) is a reasonable object for the lectures ; but where it is the 

 object the lectures are more likely to be successful where they are 

 arranged to display the resources of a particular institution, as in the 

 case of the lectures we have here. 



' The most important constructive proposal for the popularising of 

 science is the proposal to put it on the same footing as literary know- 

 ledge for examinations for the Civil Service and the like. So long as the 

 scientific man is subordinated to the literary man in our public work — 

 so long as the entrance examinations to the Univei-sities and the Army 

 and other professions may be mainly literary and cannot be mainly 

 scientitic — so long will the general public regard science as either a 

 hateful innovation or a rather interesting by-product which does not 

 pay. In face of this you cannot popularise science. ' 



Frequent reference is made by coriespondents to the success ol 

 Gilchrist lectm'es. These lectures are aiTanged under the auspices of 

 t lie Gilchrist Educational Trust, which has the administration of a fund 

 amounting originally to 70,000/. The tiiistees have founded scholar- 



1916 Z 



