Sir-I have just read "What Has Gone Wrong?" by Michael Polanyi. I wish to say how much I appreciated the opportunity of reading it: his summing up seemed very fair to me. I had only one fault to find: being an intellectual, he did not seem to realise that the masses do not gain their knowledge direct from scientists but indirectly from teachers of science. The majority of teachers can only teach facts, so sooner or later they are obliged to teach as facts what scientists with more humility would hesitate to accept definitely as facts. I do not feel competent to discuss the matter, but would like to quote from Donald Culross Peattie’s Flowery Earth. He is speaking of his education im science: "They brought discipline to cap the sprouting of youthful convictions. They taught us to postpone judgments, to acknowledge mistakes, to mistrust your own work, and give cordial credit to others, to assume nothing general from particular instances, to search for contrary evidence as if it were pearls; to walk all round a question, to define a \ problem, to finish what you begin.,These are some of their commandments and if we did not keep them any better than. God’s, merty shown to the ignorant could no longer be ours."
NOT GOTLESS
(Green Island).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 284, 1 December 1944, Page 7
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216Untitled New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 284, 1 December 1944, Page 7
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