In this article I can give you the merest outline of something of what science has done for humanity in the past, but I hope I may be able to impress upon some of you at least the conviction or to strengthen your conviction if you already hold it that science has been in the past, and will continue to be in the future, the most powerful of all instrumentalities which men can use to advance human welfare. I would not, however, be so rash as to claim that scientific knowledge alone is sufficient, for even if we accept the truth of the old adage "Knowledge is power", we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that like other more material sources of power, knowledge may and often does lie unused and barren of all performance buried, as it were, in the mind like oil and coal in the earth, under an overlying burden of inert matter, and never coming to the living surface of the mind to be employed in its activities. To be effective, knowledge must of course be combined with action, and history shows that scientific knowledge has ever been most effective, most fruitful in results, when combined with the exercise of the artistic faculty of invention.
The University of Sydney acknowledges that its campuses and facilities sit on the ancestral lands of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples, who have for thousands of generations exchanged knowledge for the benefit of all.
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