Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 27 September 1933, Page 4

“It is always necessary in examining the pictures given by scientific research to remember that it is essentially a picture of an abstraction view externally,” writes Mr Geoffrey L. Henwood in the Modern Churchman. “Values end personal experience do not enter into scientific description; indeed, much of the objective value of science lies in this separation. Although some of the finest philosophic reflection has recently come from the

pens of scicntistiphilosophors, it does not follow that a scientist is on expert, of even a good reasoner, outside lijs own particular branch of knowledge. As scientist he has no more claim to he listened to as a philosopher or theologian than any other man of trained mind, although he has an advantage, not always recognised by the popular press, over cinema stars and novelists in all matters of import. We must, then, watch the picture which science unfolds of the world about it, hut always remember that it is a mental construction of abstract symbols. The separate symbols can no more of themselves make a single coherent picture than all the king’s horses and rneu could put HumotyvDumpty together 'again. On the one hand, science is our only hope of getting a picture of the universe about us, and, on the other hand, the picture, which we have made, is something definitely other than the universe of which it is a picture. It may be. the truth, and it rn'ay be nothing tbtit the truth, but it is certainly not the whole truth.”