'FOREWORD' TO THE FRUSTRATION OF SCIENCE (1935)
It is very gratifying to be asked to write a foreword to this book. It deals
with what I called long ago the inversion of science, and it is indicative
of the growing sense of social responsibility, among some individual
scientific men at least, for the world the labors of their order have so
largely created. The public expect far more from scientific men in this
respect than they have as yet contributed. Individually most of them in
this field are still utterly unscientific, and quite as apt as the public
themselves to regard original thought on these subjects as socially
dangerous and to be suppressed and those who have strayed from the
path of 'pure' science in these directions as cranks or impostors. As for
the official and professional bodies representing science and medicine,
as yet they have hardly emerged from the easy but very questionable
attitude that it is no concern of theirs what they are hired out for.
On the other hand, the public must not expect too much. They are apt
to forget that in effect, as an entity with power of acting, they hardly
exist, until in extremis when it is too late. The pioneer and bearer of a
new evangel is always up against an inchoate mass, educable only when
miserable and, when prosperous, too proud to learn. This much at least
of justification can be offered for the doctrine, so utterly the opposite of
the truth for the individual, that suffering is the great goad to progress.
Unfortunately, scientific powers of inflicting mass suffering are now so
powerful that once started they are hardly likely to stop so long as there
is anyone left to suffer.
From the beginning to the end of these pages, whether we read of the
willful destruction of the products and productivity of the soil, the aerial
destruction of wealth by the thousand million pounds' worth, created by
somebody's labor, the embarrassing fecundity of modern technology
resulting only in every conceivable form of sabotage, the anomalous
position of the conscientious medical practitioner, the refusal of women
to bring children into such a world, the development of the art of
spreading bacterial infection as a new war technique, or the frank
abandonment by modern political movements of the hope of social
progress that science renders possible - from the beginning to the end of
these pages the reader will find elegant examples of the sort of ruling
mentality now dominating the world. Bitter, and justifiably so, as many
of the critics of science are, surely nothing bitterer could be said of it
than this, that its abundance has but enthroned the wastrel. Nor is the
solution exactly what one of the contributors rather naively suggests,
that science should look for a new master. The solution is for the public
to acknowledge its real master, and, for its own safety, insist on being
ruled not by the reflection of a reflection, but direct by those who are
concerned with the creation of its wealth rather than of its debts. It
should require that its universities and learned societies should no
longer evade their responsibilities and hide under the guise of false
humility as the hired servants of the world their work has made possible,
but do that for which they are supported in cultured release from
routine occupations, and speak the truth though the heavens fall.
FREDERICK SODDY