SCIENCE AND FALLACIES

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 75, 21 December 1921, Page 5

SCIENCE AND FALLACIES

Professor E. S. Goodricfi, F.R.S., Oxford, addressing the Geology Section of tho British Association at tho recent Edinburgh conference on Problems in Evolution, said - that when phenomena belonging to the natural world were made subjects of supernatural revelation or uncritical inquiry, science had the right to present an attitude of suspicion towards them. If there were circumstances in which matter might be divested of the property of mass, fixities might bo photographed, lucky chaims might determine, physical events, magnetic people disturb compass noodles, and so on, bv all means let them be investigated: but the burden of proof was upon those who believed in them, and every witness would be challcngod at the bar of scientific opinion. Within its own domain, science was concerned not with belief—except as a subject of inquiry—but with evidence. It claimed tho right to test all things in order to bo able to hold fast to that which was good. It declined to accept popular beliefs as to thunderbolts; living frogs and toaife embedded in blocks of coal or other hard rock without an opening, though the rock was formed millions of years ago. and all fossils found in it wore crushed as flat as paper; tho inheritance of microbic diseases; tho production of rain by explosions when tho nir was far removed from its saturation point.; the influence of tho moon on tho weather, or of underground water upon a twig held by a dowser, and dozens of like fallacies, solely because when weighed in the balance they had been found wanting in scientific truth. Its only interest in mysteries was that of inquiring into them,' and finding a natural reason for them. Mystery was thus not destroyed by knowledge, but removed to a higher plane. With one or two brilliant exceptions, popular writers of the present day are completely oblivious to the knowledge gained by scientific study, and unmoved' by the message which science was alone able to give. Unbounded riches had been placed before them, yet they continued to rake tho muckheap of animal passions for themes of composition. Not by their works would they become “children of light," but by tho indomitable spirit of man eve.r straining upwards to reach the stars.