The Sciences as an Integral Part of General Historical Study
This session was chaired by Gino Loria. George Clark initiated the session pleading that science has a truer sense of history than any other sphere of human activity. William Cecil Dampier then presented a hierarchical approach to the history of science. which he said should proceed from primitive emotions through law, economics, to science. This was followed by Thomas Greenwood who stressed the importance of understanding the history of mathematics in order to better grasp the history of philosophy. Archibald Hill then argued for more attention to the history of science in children's books. This led to a response from the Soviet delegation: Boris Zavadovsky argued that the history of science should be conceived as the history of the process of development of mankind, showing the laws to which this history conformed, as a social whole particularly in relationship to class structure. Ernst Kolman discussed a letter which Charles Darwin sent to Karl Marx which touched on the former's avoidance of the topic of religion. Modest Rubinstein added that science had progressed through economic and social of which the "great men" were merely the expression.
The Teaching of the History of Science
Historical and Contemporary Inter-relationship of the Physical and Biological Sciences
The Interdependence of Pure and AppliedScience
Special Session: ''Science at the Crossroads''
On the first day it was announced that there would be a "Special Session" to be held on the morning of 4 July at which the Soviet delegates would have the opportunity to present their papers. For the next five days the Soviet Embassy hosted a team of delegates, translators and proofreaders who produced the papers as separate documents by the morning of the Special Section. They were published as Science at the Crossroads 10 days later, with numerous typographical errors providing testimony to the rushed nature of their production process.
by Boris Zavadovsky, Director of the Institute of Neuro-Humoral Physiology, K. A. Timiriaseff, Director of the Biological Museum.
by Ernst Kolman, President of the Association of the Scientific Institute of Natural Science, Professor of the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics, Moscow; Member of the Presidium of the State Scientific Council.
by Nikolai Vavilov, Member of the Academy of Sciences, President o f the Lenin Agricultural Academy.
"Electrification as the basis of the Technological Reconstruction in the Soviet Union" by Modest Rubinstein
"The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia" by Boris Hessen, Director of the Moscow Institute of Physics, Member of the Presidium of the State Scientific Council.
