Abstract
SIR ARNOLD WILSON'S public lecture to members of the British Association and others delivered at Norwich on September 9, which dealt with “Science and Population Problems”, was a striking illustration of the manner in which the Association may contribute to the discussion of current problems of public policy and government. On these occasions of general assembly of the members, a considered statement on broad lines reaches a wider audience than that to which it is immediately addressed, and in pointing out the bearing of the results of scientific research on the method of approach to a solution of difficulties of the day, it can help to mould public opinion on sane and enlightened lines. Thus, for example, Sir Arnold Wilson, although showing in the latter part of his address that he had in mind more particularly the practical measures dictated by scientific study for dealing with a stationary or falling population in Great Britain, indicated by his wide survey of the facts, so far as known, throughout the world, that population problems assume a different complexion when viewed as a whole. He restored the perspective, which has been lost in recent discussion owing to post-War developments, by reminding his hearers that if in certain countries a stationary or falling population is a menace, a vast proportion of the world population—in the East alone, at least one third—is in immediate or prospective danger of under-nourishment or even starvation through pressure of population and economic stress. This fact, which was patent before the War and was emphasised time and again by the late Prof. J. W. Gregory, has been allowed to fall into the background in the discussion of more insistent social and economic sectional problems. Its implications are no less grave than they were, and call as urgently as ever for consideration—possibly along the line of the scientific study of the distribution of commodities.
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Science and Population Problems. Nature 136, 427 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136427b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136427b0