James B. Conant, who is one of the country's most eminent scientists as well as one of its most notable practitioners of education, tells here how he believes the layman can find out what science is and how to understand it. The language, customs, and manners of the scientists are frequently unintelligible to the rest of the population, and there is considerable danger that the ideas and forces that are moving mountains will be increasingly inaccessible to those outside the laboratories. The peril of such a situation to a democracy, where understanding must be assumed to be fairly general, is...