In a speech characterized by optimism, Nobel laureate and U of T chemistry professor John Polanyi inaugurated this year’s University Professor Lecture Series by speaking about the role of science in shaping a better world. The talk took place Monday night in Convocation Hall.

Polanyi’s address was entitled “The World That Science Built: Technology, Tolerance and Terror.” But he opened by emphasizing the importance of the arts and literature as inspiration in fields such as philosophy, political science and economics—fields from which science draws its own inspiration. Literature, he said, confronts the reality of life and motivates social and political change. It is the impulse of the humanities that enables science to act.

The context of what we say and do is important, Polanyi said, especially in technological and scientific fields. Science is knowledge, and technology is but its child. When science is confused with technology, as often happens when research interacts with industry and government, basic research can be impeded as the search for commercial applications becomes paramount.

For all its power, science must be accountable, said Polanyi, and he expressed pride in the scientific community, noting that despite being a competitive entity, science upholds the search for truth with dignity and cooperation.

Technology has shifted the power to create terror from the hands of governments to the people, enabling even small groups to exert considerable force. At the same time, technology has changed our lifestyles so that we are more susceptible to attack.

But Polanyi has hope. The spread of knowledge and freedom means that the numbers subscribing to the ideas of terror are diminishing.

Every discovery in science is a station on the road to truth, but is not truth itself. In any claim to possess truth, Polanyi sees a door open to terror. Terrorism is made possible by a belief that there is a single route to success. This belief appeals to those without hope, but will be a diminishing reality, he said, as education spreads.

Polanyi ended his address by returning to the importance of the humanities. It is through humanistic education that our ideals can be expressed peacefully and tolerance achieved.

The University Professor Lecture Series is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Foundation, a student group aimed at giving students an opportunity to hear from the world’s intellectual elite. In celebration of U of T’s 175th anniversary, they chose to arrange a series of presentations by Toronto’s most distinguished academics, the university professors.

Photograph by Simon Turnbull