SCIENGE WITHOUT "SWARK”

Hokitika Guardian, 22 November 1919, Page 4

SCIENGE WITHOUT "SWARK”

(By W. Beach Thomas.)

The AA r ar lias done more/ good to British men of science than any other class as anyone might see avlio went to the British Association at Bournemouth last Av,eek. Even the freak costumes, the illimitably puckered trousers, and preAdamite hats had vanished.

But the change was more than skin or clothes deep. It used to he the pride of (British men of science to keiep their studies;, wholly free from practical life find to wrap their opinions in a barbarous jargon.

“Micaceoris spicules of triturated vegetation are detrimental to the human organism,” said a doctor lecturer.

He meant that certain dusts were bad for us; and it would have been just as scientific to say so.

The younger school to-day would say so; and the most,obvious change in this year’s meeting was the number of extremely young lceturers, some of them rather too cocksure, putting DarAvin in his, place with an, air -of: patronage and telling their elders that mechanical science began with 'the aeroplane engine. ; But old as Avell a young for the last foAir years 'have been forced to turn their talents to the use of practical things, and the necessity has come like a ’fresh breath of air into the dry-as- 1 dust laboratories.

The “engrooved physlicistd” have been reinforced by wireless and , telephones. The chemists in making the gases and explosives,wrested many neAV, isecrets, and are Avresting more in the> work of converting what destroys into what fructifies.

The physiologists are really finding out what foods are good to eat and how much work it is t wise to do an:l the zoologists deigned to investigate Iho history of animals that harm our food supplies. • Women have forced, forward the more, vital questions of . domestic science, and the Royal Society is-endowing some of their research. One result is a wonderful simplification of language,, often accompanied, by very racy similes and metaphors. i Instead of talking about "deleterious and euepeptic carbo-hydrates,” a most learned,physiologist said last,week, “There are fats and fats,” anddea., a heavy blow to jargon. Even Frenchmen of science—.and they are .proud; of being as .simple as they can be—could not have bettered that. Of course pure unapplied science—it yields often the greatest results—cannot, in its abstruse mathematical or chemical calculations, be expressed m Saxon monosyllables. But one reason why our best discoveries have . gone to Germany for practical application and to help the prosperity of the- folk is that our men Of science have been as anchorites lulled to serene uselessness by the. purity of their science and the .impurity of ts language. _ The splendid young, vigorous schoo , trained on the wonders of wireless and stimulated by the danger of: the .war, must see to it that the hermits : do not go hack to their eaves where applied science as opposed to pure science is regarded as a sin in the soul. We need both, for both are good.