Science for the Citizen [antikvár]

FOREWORD TO THIRD EDITION Science for the Citizen is partly written for the large and growing number of intelligent adults who realize that the Impact of Science on Society is now the focus of genuinely constructive social effort. It is also written for the large and growing number of adolescents, who realize that they will be the first victims of the new destructive powers of science misapplied. Since it is the first British handbook to Scientific Humanism, it has, inevitably, the glaring faults of any new thing. Education segregates the scientific specialist from those who smdy problems of government and social welfare. So like anyone else who, in this generation, might have attempted a task so ambitious, I have had to re-educate myself in the process of writing it. Namral science is an essential part of the education of a citizen, because scientific discoveries affect the everyday lives of everyone. Hence science for the citizen must be science as a record of past, and as an inventory for fumre, human achievements. Inevitably it cannot be divorced from history, and my first duty is to acknowledge the patience with which my former colleagues of the history department in the London School of Economics responded to my requests for sources of information. Needless to say I am not competent to judge the reliability of the sources, which I have quoted at length when a personal statement of opinion would imply that I have sufficient first-hand knowledge to do so. For instance, this applies to some suggestive speculations concerning the dating of ancient monuments in Chapters I and IV. To avoid misunderstanding, let me warn the reader that different experts do not always share the same views on this topic, and the example cited in Chapter IV is not given because all authorities would agree with the date of the Pyramid to which Neuberger subscribes in his treatise on ancient technology. I have included it for reasons more fully stated below, in particular, because it gives the reader a clue to the way in which a hypothesis o.f this kind can be subjected to an independent test. In the Victorian age big men of science Uke Faraday, T. H. Huxley, and TyndaU did not think it beneath their dignity to write about simple truths with the conviction that they could instruct their audiences. There were giarits in those days. The new fashion is to select from the periphery of mathematicized hypotheses some half assimilated speculation as a preface to homilies and apologetics crude enough to induce a cold sweat in a really sophisticated theologian who knows his job. The clue to the state of mind which produces them is contempt for the common man. The key to the eloquent literature which the pen of Faraday and Huxley produced is their firm faith in the educability of mankind. Because I share that faith I have not asked the reader to take any reasoning on trust. Since the reasoning used in science is often conducted with the sort of shorthand called algebra or illustrated by the sort of scale diagrams called geometry, a casual glance at isolated pages of this book might be discouraging to those who have been humiliated by the obstacles which early education