: 
Pee ERESIDENTIAL FADDRESS. 
BY 
PROFESSOR HORACE LAMB, Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S. 
PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION. 
bf 
W38EN one is confronted as on this occasion with the British Association in 
plenary session it is permissible, I hope, to indulge in a few reflections on 
the nature and purpose of science in general. The theme is no new one and 
has never been discussed so frequently as in our time, but the very range 
of our activities entitles us to consider it from our own point of view. The 
subjects treated at these meetings range, according to the titles of our 
Sections, from the most abstract points of mathematical philosophy to 
the processes of agriculture. Between these limits we have the newest 
speculations of Astronomy and Physics, the whole field of the biological 
sciences, the problems of engineering, not to speak of other matters equally 
diverse. These subjects, again, have become so subdivided and specialised 
_ that workers in adjacent fields have often a difficulty in appreciating each 
other’s ideas, or even understanding each other’s language. What then is 
the real purpose of science in the comprehensive sense, what is the common 
inspiration, the common ambition behind such enthusiastic and sustained 
effort in so many directions ? The question may seem idle, for a sort of 
official answer has often been given. It was deemed sufficient to point to 
the material gains, the enlarged powers, which have come to us through 
science, and have so transformed the external part of our lives, The general 
aim was summed up in an almost consecrated formula: ‘ to subdue the 
forces of Nature to the service of man.’ And since it was impossible to 
foresee what abstract research might or might not provide a clue to some- 
thing useful, the more speculative branches of science were not only to be 
tolerated, but to be encouraged within limits, as ancillary to the supreme 
end. And, it must be said, the cultivators of these more abstruse sciences 
have themselves been willing sometimes to accept this position. The 
apologists of Pure Mathematics, for instance, have been wont to appeal 
to the case of the conic sections, which from the time of Apollonius 
onwards had been an entirely detached study, but was destined 
after some 2000 years to guide Kepler and Newton in formulating the 
laws of the planetary motions, and so ultimately to find its justification in 
1925 B 
