A little over twenty years ago I left the safe house of the University of Adelaide for the wilder shores of CSIRO. I had then and have now no expertise in the humanities, a topic that I can’t find in Dr Johnson’s dictionary, which provides only ‘humanity’ meaning ‘4. Philology; grammatical studies. In Scotland, humaniores literae’. I take the humanities to include the disciplines of the arts and a little more. And I do not wish to argue about the place of economics, psychology, sociology or anthropology.

In joining Australia’s pre-eminent scientific research institution, I became part of an enterprise whose remit did not and does not cover the humanities, though as the years pass it employs an increasing number of social scientists. The Science and Industry Act 1949 (as amended) lists the prime function of CSIRO as to conduct research for the benefit of Australia, and to ensure the application of this research. Nowhere in the Act are the humanities mentioned.