'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism'

I regard the public lectures which the statute of the Institute prescribes for us to deliver every year as one of the means for establishing and keeping up this contact in our small domain. Indeed I consider this to be their exclusive scope. The task is not very easy. For one has to have some kind of background to start from, and, as you know, scientific education is fabulously neglected, not only in this or that country—though, indeed, in some more than in others. This is an evil that is inherited, passed on from generation to generation. The majority of educated persons are not interested in science, and are not aware that scientific knowledge forms part of the idealistic background of human life. Many believe—in their complete ignorance of what science really is—that it has mainly the ancillary task of inventing new machinery, or helping to invent it, for improving our conditions of life. They are prepared to leave this task to the specialists, as they leave the repairing of their pipes to the plumber. If persons with this outlook decide upon the curriculum of our children, the result is necessarily such as I have just described it.

There are, of course, historical reasons why this attitude still prevails. The bearing of science on the idealistic background of life has always been great—apart perhaps from the Dark Ages, when science practically did not exist in Europe.