Science [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION During the period of the British Mandate over Palestine, a well-known British colonisation expert, Sir John Hope Simpson, reported that "there was no room in Palestine to swing a cat"; he suggested that, as the "economic absorptive capacity" of the country was so limited, Jewish immigration should be brought virtually to a standstill. Six years later. Lord Peel, the Chairman of the Royal Commission set up to determine the future of Palestine, visited Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the Jewish statesman-scientist, in his laboratory at Rehovot. Weizmann was in the middle of a test-tube experiment and Peel asked him what he was doing. "I am creating absorptive capacity," was the answer. This typical epigram expresses both the fallacy in Hope Simpson's thinking and the role of science in Israel. A country consists not only of its physical environment but also of the people. Even if the habitat is not propitious, an energetic, devoted and intelligent nation can change it by the application of science. Weizmann wrote: "I feel sure that science will bring to this land both peace and a renewal of its youth, creating here the springs of a new material and spiritual life. And here I speak of science for its own sake, and applied science." It must be conceded that, when the Jewish revival of the Holy Land began, it could hardly be termed a "good- [3]