Scientific Humanism

DANGEROUS THOUGHTS -- Lancelot Hogben--Norton ($2.75).

Biologist Lancelot Hogben, author of Mathematics for the Million and Science for the Citizen, is as bright as he is handsome. When he was elected Fellow of Great Britain's Royal Society, they called him young. Now 44, he holds the world-famed Regius Professorship of Natural History at the University of Aberdeen.

Dangerous Thoughts shows U. S. readers the impertinent Hogben intelligence at work in a set of 15 cocky, popularly scientific essays. Two pieces give the blat to Marxian dogmatists, to the theory of the "inevitability" of class war; advise Socialists to realize the importance of the skilled, salaried worker, to bring themselves up to date on technology. Other blats: the scientific ignorance of statesmen; liberal "unbias"; any front against fascism which does not take full cognizance of science; economics as an "exact" science; "humane or gentlemanly" knowledge as against "useful or scientific" knowledge.

No less than five of the 15 deal with various aspects of education, by means of which Professor Hogben is sure that civilization could be saved--or for the first time created. "If European civilization does not use science to rid itself of [war, poverty and disease], war will probably destroy our Anglo-American civilization. . . irreparably."

Other Hogbenalities:

> Formal education should be suspended during puberty, resumed when the student has some experience of living. There should be no "cultural" teaching.

> At the present rate of decline Great Britain's population will be reduced by 90% within a century. It is necessary--by what means Mr. Hogben, father of four, cannot say--"to make the four-child family fashionable."

> What Germans, to British horror, think of Jews, Britons think of the entire working class. Symptom: fake "eugenists" who glorify the bourgeoisie, pretend to prove the biological inferiority of workers.

> On freedom of speech and modern medievalism: If a man "pries into the balance sheet of a great financial corporation and publishes the truth about it, we send him to hard labor without writing materials. We no longer call it heresy. Our secular theologians call it criminal libel."

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