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Hokitika Guardian, 14 June 1933, Page 4

“Scientific knowledge is the result of systematic activity of a reflective aiiici, ’ writes Professor John Alacmurray m his book ‘'.interpreting tne Universe. ’ •‘in our concentration upon tlii,-, we erect science into the typo of all kuo.'.Edge. We forget, in our pre-occupation, that tlie kind of knowledge that science achieves is the result of investigating a world that we

already know. The conclusions of .some centuries .of scientific research into the characteristics of matter constitute uniy a minute portion oi' our knowledge of the physical world. Men knew the world they lived in long before science was thought of. And in some ways, perhaps, they knew it better and more intimately than most of us know it to-day, since we took to living'in towns and travelling in motor-cars. . The understanding of th,oi world which we gain through science can never be a substitute for tjic experience of it that we have in the normal unrellective process of living. Apart from this experience, indeed, all scientific conclusions would be completely meaningless, with no significance of any kind. They signify something only because they interpret our immediate knowledge of the world. If we did not know what water is by drinking it and washing in it and boiling it in our kettles, the scientfic statement that water is H.O.j would be merely a meaningless rf) lp.' Yet time after time, in discussions' .of' science and its discoveries, we find neople talking as if the discoveries of scieme wined out our unscientific knowledge of the world and put something quite different in its place.”