GIFTS FROM SCIENCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 January 1941, Page 9

GIFTS FROM SCIENCE

> ADDRESS TO INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTS. I j • "The idea] man is the complete ■ man." said Viscount Samuel in an address to industrial chemists. "If he i is to have knowledge, family associa- ,' lions and friendship, opportunity for . ■ 'hough’ and for action, freedom, he ; needs first the physical basis for these. , He needs a home, nutriment, health, a | secure livelihood, access to learning, a J right environment: yes. and in these ! times of lawless violence he needs as well the means to defend that way c-f life. All these are in the sphere of ' things. The material is the necessary j basis for the immaterial: secondary it I may be. but certainly indispensable. So we reach the conviction that applied science is worth while: not only for what its achievements are in themselves. but for the sake of ’lie ends that they make possible. This will Island out very plain if we imagine for ; a moment modern physical science I wiped out and try to measure the loss. I Medicine, preventive and curative, is part of applied science. Al! the diseasles that have been struck out of the catalogue of human ills would return again: surgery would bo crude and agonising: where one infant dies today, three would die; the average span of life would be greatly shortened. Scientific agriculture is part of it: the abundance everywhere that is now within i our grasp would fade away; scarcity I and famine would bring back penury i and death."