Evening Post. SATURDAY, OCTOBER. 3, 1031. A CENTURY OF SCIENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 82, 3 October 1931, Page 12

Evening Post. SATURDAY, OCTOBER. 3, 1031. A CENTURY OF SCIENCE

The British Association for the Advancement of Science held its first meeting on the 27th September, 1831. Among its objects were to give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry; and to promote an intercourse of those who cultivate science in different parts of the British Empire with one another and with foreign philosophers. It is good to knovfthat so long as a hundred years ago the King's subjects beyond the seas were deemed to be concerned with the cultivation of science, though there is, of course,' a distinction, between the cultivation of science and scientific research. The popularisation of science has, indeed, been one of the principal functions of the British Association, and this also was in accordance with the desire of its founders "to diffuse over the whole country the latest results of scientific research." A prevailing impression, says "Cham« bora's Encyclopaedia/* that England had fallen behind other Countries, both as to the general estimation in which scientific men were held, and the prosecution of science itself, led to its formation. It .was thought that an imposing union, of science with the nobility, gentry, and clergy might tend to revive tho philosophic spirit of tho country. If it is surprising to And that in the pre-Reform era the scientific men of Britain already had in view the cultivation of science in other parts of the Empire, there is an unmistakably old-world note' in that "imposing union of science with the nobility, gentry, and clergy." It sounds as though science, having for centuries been condemned to a place below the salt, was scheming for its promotion to high life by tickling the intellectual vanity of its social superiors, and providing a new object for their patronage, i This impression is confirmed by three points in the early history of the British Association. The meeting place of Sir David Brewster and his scientific colleagues ,who organised it was the Palace of the Archbishop of York. The first President of the Association was a Viscount. And its second meeting was held in Oxford. Of the greater fitness of Oxford for an imposing gathering of the nobility, gentry, and clergy than for a scientific meeting it is hardly necessary to speak. It was not of an Oxford college that the poet wrote /Where grateful Science still adores Her Henry's Boyal shade. But it was of Oxford that Hardy wrote in "jfude the' Obscure":— Down obscure alleys, apparently never trodden now by the foot of man, and whoso very existence seemed to be forgotten, there would jut into the path. porticoes, oriels, doorways of _ enriched and' florid middle-age design, their, extinct? air being accentuatod by the rottenness of the stones. It seemed impossible that modern thought would house itself in. such decrepit and superseded chambers. / v It was of Oxford also that one who had once been one of her "young barbarians all at play" and also one of her professors—Matthew Arnold —after paying ecstatic homage to her beauty, had to take leave in the damaging invocation:— Adorable dreamer, whose heart lias been so romantic! Who hast given thyself so prodigally; giVon thyself to sides and heroes not mine, only novor to the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties! ' This beautiful and adorable dreamer, "still whispering frdm her towers the last enchantments"- —and perhaps the very latest thing in science —"of the Middle Ages" was obviously a safe place for a scientific meeting not calculated to strain that "imposing union of science with' the nobility, gentry, and clergy." And so the meeting of the British Association at Oxford In 1832, with science, it must be admitted, very creditably represented by Dr. Buckland in the chair, without setting the Isis or anything else on fire. Two more meetings of the Association at Oxford were to pass in the same innocuous fashion, but at the fourth such meeting Oxford made ample amends. The Oxford meeting of 1860 was not rinty the fiercest and most dramatic in the hundred years of the association's life, but probably also of the greatest educative value. .Darwin's "Origin of Species" had appeared in 1859,311,(1 excited much indignation, especially in the churches. It could not possibly be kept out of the Oxford meeting of the British Association in the following year, and there was a great rush for Section D, the zoological section, "to hear the Bishop of Oxford smash Darwin." Bishop Wilberforce was an eloquent and adroit speaker, but he blundered badly on this occasion by mixing flippancy with his theological thunder. v I should like, he said, to ask Professor Huxley, who is sitting by me, and is about to tear me to pieces when I have sat down, as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather'a or his grandmother's side that tho ape ancestry, comes in? When Huxley heard these words he struck his hand upon his knee with the remark: "The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands"; and it was so A After pointing out .that the

suggestion was of "descent through thousands of generations," he proceeded :— But if this question is treatqd, aiot as a matter for the calm investigation of science, but as a matter of sentiment, and if I am asked whether I would chooso to bo doscondod from the poor animal of low intelligence and stooping gait, who grins and chatters as wo pass, or from a man, endowed vvith great ability and a splendid position, who should use these gifts [here, as the point became clear, there was a groat outburst of applause, which mostly drowned the end of the sentence] to discredit and crush humblo sockors aftor truth, I hesitate what answer to make This great retort probably did as much for the theory of evolution as Huxley's scientific argument or Hooker's demonstration that the Bishop was "absolutely ignorant of the elements of botanical science." No ono doubted his (Huxley's) meaning, wrote a lady who was present, and the effect was tremendous. Ono lady faiutod and had to bo carried out; I, for one, jumped out of my scat. Huxley lived just long enough to attend the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1894, and there, in what proved to be his last public appearance, to second the vote of thanks to Lord Salisbury for a presidential address which was largely concerned with evolution. It was very curious to me, he wrote, to sit there and hear the Chancellor of the University accept, as a matter of course, the doctrines for which the Bishop of Oxford coarsely anathematised us thirty-four years earlier. E pur si muove! lam not afraid of the priests in the long-run. Scientific method is the- white ant which will slowly but surely destroy their fortifications. And the importanco of scientific method in modern practical life—always growing and increasing— is tho guarantee for tho gradual emancipation of tho ignorant upper and lower, classes,: the former of whom especially aro the strength of the priests. If Huxley had been alive to-day he would have found that the feud between the man of science and the priest, in which as "Darwin's bulldog" he played so, conspicuous a part, has lost most of its fierceness, and that this is not entirely due to the capitulation of the latter. He might also have heard the president of the British Association delivering at its- centenary meeting an address of which the key-note is accurately represented by his own above-quoted words, "the importance .of scientific method in modern practical life." Science, said General Smuts in the single sentence assigned to, him in our cabled summary, was the dominant factor in the industrial and economic life, and a further penetration iof science into every avenue of scientific activity was the main hopo of a further advance. And in the debates which are said to have "ranged from the origin of man to the problems with which he is faced owing to having overcrowded certain areas of the habitable globe," Huxley would probably have heard hardly a doubt, expressed as to the fact of evolution, though,its'methods still admit of wide differences of opinion. ■