Abstract
THE leadership of science is vital to the preservation and rebuilding of civilization. No less vital, as the recent admirable editorials in NATURE have urged, is a unity of aspiration and effort on the part of the United States and the British Commonwealth of peoples. To create now a moral and intellectual unity of the English–speaking peoples is to lay the foundation of that mighty union of democracy, the prayer of Longfellow and the message of Roosevelt, upon which hangs age–long weal or woe for mankind. The leadership of science must exert itself most fruitfully when integrated with that immense work of political creation. Indispensable to such a synthesis is the saturation of the ‘man in the street’ with the spirit and aspirations of science, together with a lively comprehension in broad outline, of what it is doing from day to day. Not until science replaces football pools in popular interest will the common person be fit to sustain civilization or the men of science in a position to lead it. Notable work in popular education has been done by many gifted thinkers. But the situation calls for something more organized and comprehensive, corresponding to the world which science has brought into being, where continents and peoples are linked in ever greater interdependence.
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NATURE, 148, 233, 263 (1941).
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BREWER, H. Leadership of Science. Nature 148, 412 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/148412a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/148412a0
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