Authority in medicine : old and new / by Major Greenwood.

  • Major Greenwood
Date:
1943
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Authority in medicine : old and new / by Major Greenwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to induce Sir Robert Walpole to endow chemistry. It is not true that a utihtarian impulse never stimulates the growth of pure science. Forty years ago, few young mathematicians were interested in biostatistics and none in industrial applications of statistical methods. A techno¬ logical demand for biometricians and industrial statisti¬ cians has changed this. Some who supplied the demand have made fundamentally important contributions to the general theory of mathematical logic. Without invidiously selecting recent and living examples, one may cite Alexis Chuprov (8) who, in the opinion of better judges than I claim to be, ranks among the greatest exponents of the theory of statistical reasoning. But Chuprov was not a professional mathematician and took a practical interest in demographic and agricultural data. Planning science, in the sense of attracting or even compelhng young men and women of abihty to serve an apprenticeship in the human or humanly important apphcations of science, ought to increase technological efficiency and need not sterihse the creative impulses which produce the finest results of pure science. But this argument goes no further than to show that, under planning, good work may be done. Authoritarian planning could only be the ideal system if we attribute to the planners a superhuman prescience. Just as authori¬ tarian political government is only an ideal system if the wielder of authority is aU-wise. Let us accept the pro¬ position that, if education had been planned on utihtarian lines a century ago, our material command of the environ-
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