SCIENCE & LIFE.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1904, 12 November 1913, Page 4

SCIENCE & LIFE.

Sir W.-F* Barrett-, P.R,S„couimejiitiiig i'A "The Caatemporar.y Review" on (Sir Oliver Lodge's British Association address, especially consi-uends the opportune words on the ludicrous and pedantic narrowness of scientific men dogmatising in a negative diroctian, and saying that we can reduce everytlii'nfi to Physics and chemistry. The statementwas needed as a useful corrective to the impression jolt on tjie public liiiiid by Si.r_ J3. Scliafqr's address at- Dundee, in whieh lie said that, 'St-ho problems of life are essentially problems of mat- 1 teri" and anticipated the production of living from juro-Hvibg matter. Whereevei' jifo is manifested, points out Sir W. f. Barrett, an incalculable element is introduced whick'transmtds any conceivable application of the laws of chemistry aiid physics. Biologists who have made' a study of philosophy, he saysi rately hold a materialistic view of tho mystery of life. With pardonable pride Sir W. I<\ Barrett recalls a paper which he read thirty-seven years ago to the British Association, advocating. psychical research which was then stigmatised as "the recrudescence!, of superstition." Now his views have been fortified and enforced from tho presidential chair of the Assoiiation, In those days Sir Oliver Lodge declared thoughttransference in^wssihilo,'but Sir W. F. Barrett persuaded him to take up psy-: diical research, siul he became eogvitfc* ed< Ho puts very well the limits of] such investigation; I

"AH that psychical research can possibly hope to prove is (1) that life and consciousness ' can exist without, a ma-terial-body dud brain such as w-o liftvo here: -Slid (2) that communicating ■inteliigciHce is thft survival in tjio unseen. of an individual who onco lived an earth."