THE RELATION OF SCIENCE TO HUMAN LIFE. By Prof. ADAM SEDGWICK, F. R. S. In casting about for a suitable introduction for my address this afternoon, I came across some words written by a great Englishman, which, with your permission, I will read to you: Remember the wise, for they have labored and you are entering into their labors. Every lesson which you learned in school, all knowledge which raises you above the savage and the profligate who is but a savage dressed in civilized garments-has been made possible to you by the wise. Every doctrine of theology, every maxim of morals, every rule of grammar, every process of mathematics, every law of physical science, every fact of history or of geography, which you are taught, is a voice from beyond the tomb. Either the knowledge itself, or other knowledge which led to it, is an heirloom to you from men whose bodies are now moldering in the dust, but whose spirits live forever and whose works follow them, going on, generation after generation, upon the path which they trod while they were upon earth, the path of usefulness, as lights to the steps of youth and ignorance. They are the salt of the earth, which keeps the world of man from decaying back into barbarism. They are the children of light. They are the aristocracy of God, into which not many noble, not many rich, not many mighty are called. Most of them were poor; many all but unknown in their own time; many died and saw no fruit of their labors; some were persecuted, some were slain as heretics, innovators, and corruptors of youth. Of some the very names are forgotten. But though their names be dead their words live, and grow, and spread over every fresh generation of youth, showing them fresh steps towards that temple of wisdom which is the knowledge of things as they are; the knowledge of those eternal laws by which God governs the heavens and the earth, things temporal and eternal, physical and spiritual, seen and unseen, from the rise and fall of mighty nations to the growth and death of moss on yonder moors. So spake Charles Kingsley, and his words I make use of as an introduction which strikes the keynote of what I have to say to you to-day. The subject which I have chosen for my address-the relation of pure science, and especially of biological science, to human life, and inferentially the relation which ought to exist between pure and Address delivered at the Imperial College of Science and Technology on December 16, 1909. Reprinted, after author's revision, from Nature, London, No. 2095, vol. 82, December 23, 1909. applied science in a college of science is naturally of great interest to us in the Imperial College, which is a college of science and technology, and the purposes of which are, in the words of the charter, "to give the highest specialized instruction and to provide the fullest equipment for the most advanced training and research in various branches of science, especially in relation to industry." Particularly do I desire to set forth as clearly as I can the justification for including in a college which deals, not only with science, but with science in relation to industry, those branches of science which deal with organisms. As industry forms the principal occupation of human life, and as the phenomena of organisms constitute the science of life, it may seem absurd to set out solemnly to justify the inclusion of the biological sciences in a college which deals with science especially in its relation to human life. Nevertheless, having regard to the fact that I have heard some doubt expressed as to whether the cult of the biological sciences properly falls within the scope of the Imperial College, it may not be out of place to bear the matter in mind on this, the second, occasion of the prize giving of our new college. What is the meaning of the word science? As in the case of so many words, its meaning has become confused by its partial application, i. e., by its application to a part only of its contents, and this has often led to a misapprehension of the relation of science and of the scientific man to life. Science simply means knowledge, and to speak of scientific knowledge, as opposed to ordinary knowledge, is to use a redundant phrase, always supposing that we are using the word knowledge in its strict sense. Huxley defined science as organized common sense, by which, I take it, he meant knowlege of things as they are knowledge the reality of which can at any time be checked by observation and experiment-for common sense, if it is anything, is the faculty by which we are made aware of reality. Science is sometimes spoken of as exact knowledge, but I am bound to say that I do not like the phrase exact knowledge; it seems to imply an insult to the word knowledge. Its use reminds me of a friend of mine who, when he was offered one morning at breakfast a fresh egg, mildly asked, "In preference to what other kind of egg?" It recalls those regrettable phrases one so often hears, I honestly believe, or I honestly think; one wonders how the people who make use of them usually believe and think. It must, I think, be admitted that science simply means knowledge, and that there is nothing peculiar about the knowledge of scientific men by which it differs from other knowledge. Scientific men are not a class apart and distinct from ordinary mortals. We are all scientific men in our various degrees. If this is so, w comes it that the distinction is so often made between scientific men and nonscientific men, between scientific knowledge and nonscientific knowledge? The truth appears to lie here: Though it is true that all men possess knowledge, i. e., science, yet there are some men who make it their main business to concern themselves with some kind of knowledge, and especially with its increase, and to these men the term scientific has been technically applied. Now, the distinctive feature of these men, in virtue of which the term scientific is applied to them, is that they not only possess knowledge, but that they make it their business to add to knowledge, and it is this part of their business, if any, which justifies their being placed in a class apart from other possessors of knowledge. The men who make it their main business to add to knowledge may be divided into two classes, according to the motive which spurs them on: (1) There are those whose immediate object is to ameliorate the conditions of human life and to add to its pleasures; their motive is utility, and their immediate goal is within sight. Such are the great host of inventors, the pioneers in agriculture, in hygiene, preventive medicine, in social reform and in sound legislation which leads to social reform, and many other subjects. (2) There are those who pursue knowledge for its own sake without reference to its practical application. They are urged on by the desire to know by what has been called a divine curiosity. These men are the real pioneers of knowledge. It is their work which prepares the way for the practical man who watches and follows them. Without their apparently useless investigations, progress beyond the limits of the immediately useful would be impossible. We should have had no applied electricity, no spectrum analysis, no aseptic surgery, no preventive medicine, no anæsthetics, no navigation of the pathless ocean. Sometimes the results of the seeker after knowledge for its own sake are so unique and astounding that the whole of mankind stands spellbound before them, and renders them the same homage that the child does the tale of wonderful adventure; such is the case with the work on radium and radio-activity, which is at present fixing the attention of the whole civilized world. Sometimes the work is of a humbler kind, dealing apparently with trivial objects, and appealing in no way to the imagination or sense of the wonderful; such was the work which led to and formed the basis of that great generalization which has transformed man's outlook on nature the theory of organic evolution; such was the work which produced aseptic surgery and the great doctrines of immunity and phagocytosis which have had such tremendous results in diminishing human pain. The temper of such men is a curious one; no material reward can be theirs, and, as a rule, but little fame. Yet mankind owes them a debt which can never be repaid. It is to these men that the word scientific has been specially applied, and with this justification—they have no other profession save that of pursuing knowledge for its own sake, or, if they have a profession, it is that of the teacher, which, indeed, they can hardly avoid. Ought such men, working with such objects, to find a place in the Imperial College? It is a curious thing, but it has only comparatively recently been realized, that a sound and exact knowledge of phenomena was necessary for man. The realization of this fact, in the modern world at any rate, occurred at the end of the middle ages; it was one of the intellectual products of the Renaissance, and in this country Francis Bacon was its first exponent. In his "Advancement of learning" he explained the methods by which the increase of knowledge was possible, and advocated the promotion of knowledge to a new and influential position in the organization of human society. In Italy the same idea was taught by the great philosopher, Giordano Bruno, who held that the whole universe was a vast mechanism of which man, and the earth on which man dwells, was a portion, and that the working of this mechanism, though not the full comprehension of it, was open to the investigation of man. For promulgating this impious view both he and his book were burned at Rome in 1600. You will find the same idea cropping up continually in the written records of that time; Copernicus gave it practical recognition when he demonstrated the real relation of the earth to the sun, and it was thoroughly grasped by our own Shakespeare, who gave it expression in the dialogue between Perdita and Polixenes in the Winter's Tale: Perdita. The fairest flowers o' the season Are our carnations, and streak'd gillyvors Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not To get slips of them. Polirenes. Wherefore, gentle maiden, do you neglect them? Perdita. For I have heard it said There is an art which, in their piedness, shares With great creating nature. Yet nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock and make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race: this is an art Which does mend nature,-change it rather; but The art itself is nature." This is an intensely interesting passage, for it shows that Shakespeare had grasped the idea of evolution, the idea, that is to say, that nature contains within herself the power of altering or "mending" herself. The interest is It is not difficult for us, though it may be difficult to our descendants, to understand how hard it was for man to attune himself to this new, this mighty conception, and the intellectual history of the last three hundred years is a record of the struggles to make it prevail. Trained through long ages to believe that the heavens were the abode of the gods, who constantly interfered in the daily affairs of life and in the smallest operation of nature, it seemed to men impious to maintain that the earth was in the heavens, and to peer into the mysteries which surrounded them, and the endeavor to do so has been stoutly resisted; but the conflict, in so far as it has been a conflict with prejudice, is now over. It vanished in the triumphs of the modern views on the origin of man which will be forever associated with the names of Lamarck, Spencer, and Darwin. The triumph of these views does not mean that they are correct or that we know anything more about the great mystery of life than we did before. He would be a bold and a prejudiced man who made that assertion. What it means is this, that man is grown up, that he has cast off the intellectual tutelage under which he has hitherto existed, that he has attained complete intellectual freedom, and that all things in heaven and earth are legitimate subjects of investigation. But it means even more than this; it means that he has at last come to realize the true significance of the injunction of the old Hebrew teacher: "Fear God and keep His commandments, for that is the whole duty of man; " and of the psalmist when he said: "Make me to go in the path of Thy commandments, for therein do I delight. In keeping of them there is great reward." But in order to keep them he must first ascertain what they are, and this he is determined to do, so far as his capacities permit, by the only method open to him that of minute and arduous research. Let us hear then the conclusion of the whole matter. We claim for science no less a scope than this, the discovery of what God's commandments are. Some of these we already know, for they have been handed down to us in our sacred books or have been discovered for us by our forefathers. To discover others is our whole duty; but the task is endless, and to the end of time man's prayer must ever be, in the words of that splendid old collect now being read in our churches, "Give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light." increased by the opening lines of Perdita's next speech, in which is implied the modern doctrine that acquired characters are not inherited, for he makes Perdita reply: I'll not put The dibble in earth to set one slip of them; No more than were I painted, I would wish This youth should say, 't were well, and only therefore |