The gift of reason

On the occasion of this 60th anniversary, I wish to reflect with you more generally on how well we have taken up that charge of using the gift of reason to the benefit and use of man, and more specifically, Caribbean man.

I would imagine Thomas Taylor (first principal) interpreting that gift of reason as the consequence of the creation of knowledge in those teachers and scholars who make this place their intellectual home for longer or shorter periods of time.

I could cite data on the very tangible contributions in every aspect of Caribbean life - the social and physical sciences, public service, and, of course, the arts. More and more we contribute to increasing the consciousness that all things in life are not subject to physical measure, or as Einstein noted, everything that is counted does not count and not everything that counts can be counted.

I know much better the seminal contributions in my own discipline of medicine - how children no longer die from diseases that made our infant mortalities reason for shame; of our current efforts in research to provide Caribbean responses to the growing pandemic of diseases like heart disease, stroke and diabetes; of our contributions to fashioning a response to the modern plague of HIV/AIDS.