178 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



support to a notion that political problems will yield to something known 

 as ' the scientific attack '. Talk to me of the scientific approach in physics, 

 and I shall have an idea of what you mean, though you will easily bewilder 

 me with detail : talk to me of ' scientific approach ' to problems of real 

 life, I shall suspect you of indulgence in mere jargon. 



This is not to assert that science unfits a man for political discussion : 

 if only because by training men of science are prepared to believe that 

 problems of urgency may yet be hard, I hold on the contrary that some 

 scientific leaven is beneficial in almost any body of administrative 

 humanists. It is a protest against our facile modern use of the word 

 ' scientific ' (which if it means anything connotes a special kind of approach 

 to special problems) where ' trained common sense ' is the faculty which 

 is really needed. In science we seek to explain phenomena which we 

 believe to be outside man's control : it is the faith in which our work is 

 done — for if the facts were not inexorable, and could be altered at man's 

 pleasure, how could we hope to find enduring ' laws ' ? But politics is 

 concerned with action in fields where we believe that we can influence 

 results : I see no reason to believe that the same technique will serve. 



17. Rather than seek to defend our activities from the charge that evil 

 can come of knowledge misapplied, might it not be better that we under- 

 took a harder task, trying to instil into the mind of the public a clearer 

 notion of the aims with which real scientific work is done ? For what is 

 that notion now, in these days of ' popular science ' ? At best, a picture 

 of life lived monastically by men who care nothing for the world outside 

 their laboratories, but spend their energies unceasingly in the quest for 

 more and more knowledge of less and less. (Is it surprising if the public 

 question the right of such men to leisure, seeing that by their carelessness, 

 as it appears, forces are unleashed which may bring our civilisation to 

 utter ruin ?) At worst, an uncomprehended picture of modern ' wonders 

 of science ' — gifts which these same men have conferred upon their 

 fellows, altruistically wresting from nature the secrets of spiritual and 

 material benefit ; so that somehow, while the astronomer fosters humility 

 by telling the vastness of interstellar space, Heisenberg's principle of 

 determinacy is thought to bring mystic comfort to men oppressed by the 

 notion of all-pervading law. Equally unfounded, it is I believe the other 

 side to that sense of responsibility for the consequences of science, about 

 which I have spoken already ; and on a more material plane it is the main- 

 stay of the patent medicine business 1 For it has given us a public super- 

 ficially acquainted with ' recent progress in science ', yet in reality no less 

 ignorant, and more gullible, than was the public of Victorian days. 



Never have greater powers of exposition been devoted to the ' populari- 

 sation ' of science : when, I wonder, shall we find like powers devoted to 

 the harder task of a real apologia } To telling, not of the treasure found, 

 but of the quest ; to showing the true man of science (for it is the fact) 

 neither as care-free dilettante nor as philanthropist, but seeking truth like 

 the artist, because he must ? That, I maintain, is the real spirit of science, 

 be it pure or applied ; a spirit that breathes in every book of science" 

 worth the name : to make of difficulty a stimulus, to be unwearied in 

 determination to do good work. Is it not there, rather than on a favourable 

 trade-balance of benefits conferred, that we who have chosen science 



