KNOWLEDGE AND POWER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 16, 13 October 1939, Page 41

KNOWLEDGE AND POWER

Science Marches On: The Origin, Progress and Significance of Scientific Knowledge. By Walter Shepherd. Harrap (420 p.p., 8/6d.). There is ancient authority for the belief that knowledge is power. But the knowledge that was power three thousand years ago would not carry us far to-day. Internally, we have, of course, changed little. We still think and. feel, sigh and sing very much as we have done since we first became aware of external things; but the external things themselves are unrecognisable..The be=: ginning of knowledge may still be the fear of the Lord, but the fear of the Lord alone will: not cure toothache, or take a submarine across the Atlantic, or enable us in New zens to hear Hitler. Neither will the scenes that is in: this book. But no one who reads it wilh ever again feel so powerless. For it is not a history of the sciences, or even of one science. After all, no one can follow a history unless he has some familiarity at least with its material. But the when, why, and how of things that come within the range of our curiosity is a different story. If the teacher tells us that he knows where and how to begin, he will not only hold our interest, but awake and expand our minds; and Mr. Shepherd is that very rare man. He begins, a little daringly, with the discovery of writing, since progress would be almost ‘impossible unless knowledge, as it is acquired, could be preserved.-But the soos. passes to fire, to the fruits of the earth, and to our bodies, and when he has us really interested he tries magic on us, black and white, takes us exploring, and then passes by easy steps to the origin of life, the idea of evolution, to figures, force, and then into outer space. In a final chapter he asks where science is going: There will come a ‘time when the. stars. shall have run their courses, and the very | elements of material existence will be dis-_ organised into random radiation.. But . when nothing remains but a vacuous globe of dying . ether waves, impotent to accomplish anything | more for ever, it is still not for us to. Predict _ a blank of silent chaos. The was once wound up-it, is, all’.we need to, know. ~ Each reader will give his own’ * interpretation to those italics,