“A
man who looks at glass
On
it may stay his eye,
Or if
he pleases through it pass
And
then the heavens espy,
Are
not those heavens which are beyond the immediate objects of our observation
coloured by our prejudices, pre-possessions, emotions, or imagination, as often
as they are defined by any profound insight into the depth of nature’s laws? In
most of these questions an open mind and a suspended judgment appear to me the
true scientific position, whichever way our inclinations may lead us…
Oh
yet we trust that somehow good
Will
be the final goal of ill
That
nothing walks with aimless feet;
That
not one life shall be destroy’d
Or
cast as rubbish to the void,
When
God hath made the pile complete.”
Sir William Henry Flower
From the presidential address
to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, September 11, 1889
