Abstract
AT a time when restrictions are being placed upon freedom of scientific work and speech in some countries, and when the nations look to science for the materials of destruction, the momentous pronouncement of the American Association at Indianapolis is a challenge to science and to society (see p. 169 of this issue). No men of science who, in the words of the corporate resolution passed by the Council of the American Association, “regard the suppression of independent thought and of its free expression as a major crime against civilization itself”, can ignore that challenge. Nor is the British Association likely to disregard the invitation to co-operate in forming the nucleus of what will be a World Association for the Advancement of Science and Society—an international 'brains trust'—since it was the success of the Blackpool meeting and its concern for social problems which inspired the recent action in the United States. What the American visitors heard there, in the free and constructive addresses delivered by scientific workers on the effects of science on social problems, convinced them that men of science, with unsealed lips, had a great contribution to make to world order. The symposium on “Science and Society”, at their Indianapolis meeting, was their first response. The resolutions of their council, proclaiming a Magna Charta of scientific freedom, reaffirming the democracy of knowledge, and inviting all who could subscribe to the free principles of science to join in world co-operation, carried the lesson of the British Association into world affairs.
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A World Association for Science and Society. Nature 141, 150 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141150c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141150c0