Abstract
IN an address to the annual conjoint meeting of the Manchester Chemical Societies on November 10, Prof. A. Findlay, under the title “Science and the Community”, strongly deprecated extravagant claims advanced as to the part science has to play in the administration of the State. Much disservice has been done to the cause of science by those who fail to recognise that scientific facts are often only one aspect or factor involved in a problem. Science is only one of the great human values, and attempts to antagonise the spirit of science and the quest of beauty, moral values and ethics are a misfortune to the whole community. Prof. Findlay suggested that, so far as industry is concerned, the battle for the recognition of scidnce is already won, but his opinion that science has already received full recognition in the affairs of State was strongly challenged in the subsequent discussion. Prof. Findlay referred to the excessive specialisation of the average graduate in science and emphasised the need for a wider training and for the imparting of general culture and particularly the sense of values which the philosophy of science inculcates. In this, as in his plea for the recognition of the scientific spirit as one of the great expressions of the human spirit, making a contribution to spiritual welfare of mankind fully as important as that of art and literature and religion, Prof. Findlay presented an admirably balanced picture of the position of science in human culture which was greatly appreciated even by those who most strongly criticised either his assumptions as to the position of science in industry and the State, or the intractability of the human factors in social problems to the probings of the scientific mind.
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Science and the Community. Nature 130, 770 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130770b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130770b0