Abstract
THE British Association was holding its annual meeting in Dundee in 1939 when war was declared. Appropriately enough, the Association is now holding its first full-time post-war meeting in the same city. It was therefore a wise decision on the part of the Council of the Association to arrange that the general theme at the meeting should so far as possible be “Swords into Ploughshares” The contribution of science to human progress is mainly positive and constructive, no matter whether it be fundamental or specifically applied; most men of science would wish that it were completely so. But in warfare of this modern age men of science have their part to play, distasteful though it may prove to be. Yet scientific research carried out as part of the strategy of war almost invariably yields results which, despite the fact that they might be destructive in war-time application, present much useful material and data for the positive pursuits of peace-time. This is well brought out in the addresses of the presidents of the various sections of the Association, but nowhere more so than in Sir Henry Dale's general presidential address entitled “Science in War and Peace” (p. 280).
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Swords into Ploughshares. Nature 160, 273–274 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/160273a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/160273a0