WRY NOT SCIENCE FOR POLITICIANS?

Hokitika Guardian, 3 February 1928, Page 1

WRY NOT SCIENCE FOR POLITICIANS?

It lias heroine customary to describe tile present period of civilisation as the Age of Science. This term is used, apparently with satisfaction, to distinguish ourselves from those more thoughtless and emotional mediaeval people who lived in the Age of Koligion, and from those earlier pagan Homans who believed in augurs and arms; and from those still remote and inferior creatures who were simply •‘barbarians.” There is much truth in this classilica 1 ion, though it may cause some embarrassment to future historians to explain how an ago of scientific knowledge could have lived so often in slums and smoke-polluted iowns, which could have been so easily rebuilt or purified. It will la 1 still more difficult to give a plausible explanation of the fact that an age u hich prided itself on its scientific rationalism should have so much despaired of reason that it spent four years in mutual' killing, as the only method of arguing the points at issue. Hut while admitting that this is indeed an age of science, it is of great importance to note that there is one very large department of our allairs to which our boasted scientific methods have not been applied. Our politicians still, in the main, conduct their business, which is our business as well in the same unscientific and unphilosQphical manner as our ancestors did in the days long ago, when there there wore no text-hooks on soc ial science, political economy, or the many kindred subjects which now can he found on the humblest shelves. —G. E. Stirling Taylor in “The Xinetoenth Century and After.”