 Although some may snipe another's carp, there can be no denying the proposition that science is the best procedure yet discovered for exposing fundamental truths about the world, by its combination of careful experimentation guided by theory, and its elaboration and improvement of theory based on the experiments it has inspired. It has shown itself to be of enormous power for the elucidation and control of nature. There appeared to be no bounds to its competence. It can comment on the origin and end of the world, on the emergence, evolution, and activities of life, and it can even, presumably, account for the activities and beliefs of sociologists. This claim of universal competence may seem arrogant, but it appears to be justified. No other mode of discovery has proved to be so effective, or to contribute so much towards the achievement of the aspirations of humanity. Foremost among these achievements is the continually renewed reinforcement of the view that the human brain is such a powerful instrument that it can illuminate whatever it selects as its object of study, including itself. A second major achievement is the demonstration that the world is a rational place, and although it may be too complex globally to be subject to much prediction, science continually reaffirms the view that structures and events can be explicated. Third, of course, in this awesome load of achievements is the rich abundance of goods and technologies that science provides for society, including medicine, transport, and communication. Errogant, its claims may be, but science springs from humanity and exercises it in all its endeavors. In a number of respects, its procedures are an idealization of the qualities that we regard as admirable in everyday intercourse. It is honest. Admittedly, there are some practitioners who, for one reason or another, are dishonest, but they are invariably found out, even though they may waste time. Truth invariably prevails in science, even though the road to it is not always straight. It is free of irrational prejudice. I grant that it is not free of prejudice, for the whole edifice is based on the expectation of rationality, and the view that observations and theories will form a mutually supportive network, but it is free of irrational prejudice, in the sense that it has an open mind toward the acceptance of new paradigms, such as those that have been associated with natural selection, relativity, and quantum theory. Thirdly, it is transnational, transcultural, and transracial. There is not a Japanese science, a Malawian science, and a Slavonic science. There is no Christian science worth the name, no Islamic science, and no Hindu science. There is no aristocratic science, and no working class science. What respectable science there is knows no frontiers of country, faith, or class. There may of course be particular interests in each of these groups, but that is no different from a chemist being interested in one thing and a biologist in another. There are no opportunities for lasting conspiracy in science. The structure of the scientific enterprise is such as to encourage the demolition of others. Fame in science comes not from the adherence to old attitudes and the exegesis of authoritative writings, but from their overthrow. There is a constant urge to discover the revolutionary and to overthrow current paradigms. Natural selection was a revolution and a stepping stone to fame. So was relativity, and so was quantum theory. The sheer thrill of discovery is the spur to greater effort. All young scientists aspire to revolution. The same spirit of aggressive inquiry is the basis of scientists careers, and is the underlying reason why false claims are so soon overthrown. A scientist constantly exposes the breast to attack by those who, if they sent a rat, will attack without mercy. Science is the ultimate market economy of knowledge, where only valid observations and plausible theories survive. An excellent example of the scientific method in progress is the story of cold fusion. The facts of this story, such as they are well known and I need not rehearse them here. Although the episode is widely regarded as one in which chemists got egg on their face, the outcome is in fact rather more positive for science as a whole. Then as now, the world was an urgent need of cheap sources of energy, and there was a desperation to believe that the reported observations were true. Had the claims been within the context of religion or some other similarly relaxed code of inquiry, then shrines would still have dotted Utah. But scientists smelled a rat, and even those who did not still knew that the reported observations had to be tested exhaustively. What appears to be the end of the story is now well known. The experiments were poorly organized and executed, and two hasty publications circumvented the constraints of peer review. Cold fusion, at least in the form reported, is regarded as an illusion. Here is the longing of society for miracles thwarted by the application of science. Although science encourages originality and fans' revolution, it does not do so willy-nilly. Classic revolutions are conservative, cautious affairs. They are carried out only if observations show them to be strictly necessary, and they are normally erected on the foundations of the already secure. Revolutions in science do not emerge as free-form bubbles floating in a vacuum. Even relativity is firmly based in the milieu of classic physics and stems from the imposition of a particular transformation law. And all this verbiage, of course, lies the natural scientist ultimate justification for the procedures of science. It works, and it is consistent. That it works can be seen all around us. It works in condensed matter physics, the basis of information technology. It works in fluid mechanics, the basis of transport. It works in molecular biology, the basis of medicine and agriculture. Not only does it work. It works regardless of the cultural setting. British Airways does not fly its aircraft on British aerodynamic principles, and all on Jewish aerodynamic principles. Successful medicine is fundamentally the same in Japan as it is in Canada. A conference of scientists will be a global meeting of minds, and so long as politics does not corrupt the proceedings, the participants will speak a common language of concepts and aspirations. Where external influences do seek to impose attitudes on science, where there are pressures to control the free flow of information and activity, then science soon fails. We saw this with Lysenko in the Soviet Union, where actual social pressure, the attempt of society to impose itself on science, led to the decay of biology there. I said that as well as working, science is consistent. Ideas flow into science from all parts of the world, from all its cultures and backgrounds, and from different disciplines. Where they merge, they mix, and are seen to be mutually compatible. Ideas emerging from biology, despite the many different pressures at work, are not in conflict with those emerging from particle physics. Ideas in chemistry merge seamlessly with those of geology, botany, physics, and astronomy. That is the considerable strength of science, for it springs from many sources, and those sources mingle constructively where they meet. No more compelling example of this marriage of rivers is to be found than in modern cosmology, where an explanation of the large-scale structure of the universe is found to require concepts, information, and facts from particle physics. Here the immensely small meets the awesomely large, yet they match and mutually augment. It is frankly absurd to suppose that this matching is a conspiracy and a distortion of vision by an aberrant social lens. It is equally absurd to suggest that the global understanding we are acquiring of nature is an intellectual fantasy. Science, the consummation of the Renaissance and the apotheosis of the human intellect, is on the track of ultimate truth, and no attempt to discredit it will deflect it from this noble task. Thanks for watching.