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Show Science"DoesnJtGetPeronar SCIENCE, in short, is the coldblooded business of searching for truth and factrcheckmg and double checking to prove that they are, indeed, truth and fact Then it goes about to make rational ra-tional use of them. It is the quintessence of objectivity. ob-jectivity. If it finds a fact anywhere on earth, in the air above it, in the water beneath, in the innermost recesses of the atoms of animal, mineral min-eral or vegetable kingdoms, it seizes it and appraises ap-praises it for what it is, no more, no less. Science not pseudo-science lives in the atmosphere atmos-phere of absolute honesty. There is overplenty of hunibuggery parading as science, but it was not among those present when the Anferican Society of Mechanical Engineers Engi-neers gave its highest awaod honorary membershipto member-shipto an Italian engineer for deriving a formula for-mula through which the dangerous "water hammer" is at last to be conquered. In sizeable hydraulic systems it can wreak havoc and de- atroy life. la the household plumbing and heat- ing arrangements it can annoy no end in sleeping sleep-ing or waking hours, but scarcely do damage except ex-cept to delicately balanced nerves. In the engineering en-gineering field, discovery of means to master it is epochal achievement. The award goes to Lorenzo Allievi in total disregard of our feelings toward the corporate state, il duce, the barefoot Ethiopians or Vitlono's passionate pronouncement that "War is the quintessence quin-tessence of Beauty." Engineer Allievi found the cure for water hammer. It is truth and fact, and science takes it to its bosom. It would have done the same had his name been O'Toole, Swend-sen, Swend-sen, Rosen ba urn or Stalin. Science doesn't get personal, which is a good idea. The same idea would work swell in a great many other fields of human endeavor. |