The Science Conference

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 911, 25 January 1957, Page 7

The Science Conference

HE 32nd meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science had just opened as we went to press, and on Thursday, January 31, YA and YZ stations will broadcast the first of a series of postconference talks. Twenty years ago at its last meeting in New Zealand, the President, Sir David Rivett, in his opening address on The Scientific Estate, said: "We have turned, largely but perhaps not yet far enough, as a public scientific association, towards those studies which are concerned more particularly with Man, and especially with Man as a social being. . . The interplay of human beings, the social product and all its reactions, as justly claim our earnest attention as the interplay of atoms and molecules; and possibly in the end may prove to be no less orderly when viewed on a_ sufficiently broad scale." Whether modern science would be able to extend its technique, and therefore its boundaries, rapidly enough to handle the social environment as it had handled and was handling the physical environment, was a hard ques-

tion, said Sir David, but it could hardly be denied that a severe challenge was extended to it. The enlargement of the sections devoted to the social sciences in this year’s conference shows that science is meeting the challenge, and in the main emphasis is laid on the practical-on the political and economic problems urgently needing solution and on the implications of recent history. Several New Zealanders now prominent in the social sciences overseas have returned to give papers at this meeting. One is Professor Raymond Firth, successor to Malinowski in the Chair of Anthropology in the University of London, who has continued the tradition of fine schelarship and humane study established by his predecessor. Another is Professor J. W. Davidson, of the Australian National University, Canberra, a world expert on Pacific affairs. The programme of the present conference also shows extensive subdivision in the other sciences over the past 20 years, indicating their growth, increased specialisation, and the growing number of applied fields) Here again the emphasis is on practical problems, such as those that influence the development of agriculture, raw materials and power in Australia and New Zealand. . New Zealanders eminent overseas in fields other than the social sciences who

are here for the conference include Professor F. W. G. White, Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia, who is presiding over the section dealing with Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics, and Professor F. J. Turner, head of the Geology Department of the University of California.

Several of the eminent visitors are known to NZBS listeners through talks given in the past. The well-known broadcaster Crosbie Morrison has also come to New Zealand for the conference, and later will gather material and record for the NZBS a series of talks on New Zealand wild life,