230 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



to distinction as an investigator. No one, it is true, can be an inspiring 

 teacher who does not possess intellectual initiative and who is not engaged 

 in a creative pursuit, but most of us have suffered at one time or another 

 from the investigator ' whose thoughts are too full for words.' 



Furthermore we must avoid the undue sacrifice of breadth for depth for 

 other reasons. 



The accumulation of data and the provision of information bears much 

 the same relation to the advancement of knowledge as artificial fertilisers 

 to crop production. Just as our fertilisers must be properly balanced, so 

 too our information must be so correlated and concerted that ignorance 

 in one department does not become the limiting factor in our utilisation 

 of extensive data in others. In these days of extreme and increasing 

 specialisation such correlation of effort is becoming more and more im- 

 portant, and it is to the Universities, old and young alike, that we must 

 look for the maintenance of that contact and synthesis which is essential 

 to real progress. Because the research worker to-day delves more and 

 more deeply into the mysteries of nature than ever in the past, the field 

 he explores is correspondingly more restricted, and hence it is more 

 necessary than ever before that those who devote themselves to science 

 should have a wide background of culture. In particular I should like 

 to urge that the time has come when the curriculum required of those 

 proceeding to a University degree in Science should be reconsidered. 

 It is, in the present state of knowledge, as much an anachronism that a 

 student should be able to proceed to a degree in Chemistry having no 

 knowledge of Biology as that he should proceed to a degree in Botany 

 with a mere smattering of either Physics or Chemistry. Anyone who 

 aspires to a degree in Science should in my opinion have an adequate 

 appreciation of the principles of Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, 

 especially as regards statistical methods and probability theory, and lastly, 

 but by no means least, one biological subject, preferably Botany, since 

 relation to their physical environment and the laws of heredity are more 

 easily studied in plants than in animals, and the animal kingdom is, after 

 all, dependent upon the vegetable. Four obligatory subjects in the first 

 year University course might and probably should involve the return to 

 a five-subject Intermediate examination in Science, so that a fifth optional 

 subject would permit of the desirable freedom of choice in respect to 

 subjects pursued in the more advanced stages. But further, it may be 

 stressed that some biological training is to-day an essential to any liberal 

 culture and should be as much an obligatory part of a school curriculum 

 as arithmetic.^ 



Whatever views we may hold with regard to the respective merits of the 

 vitalistic and mechanistic schools of thought in relation to organisation, 

 the incontrovertible fact is that in the present state of knowledge we are 

 quite unable to express and indeed cannot hold out any prospects of 

 explaining, the phenomenon of life in terms of physics and chemistry 

 alone. Such a view is quite independent of whether or not we speculate 

 as to what the future may hold in store. At present therefore there are 



^ Such restrictions of choice to a single optional subject would more than 

 compensate for any time-table difficulties that might result from the number of 

 subjects being increased from four to five. 



