Several hundred scientists, philosophers, and religious leaders will convene at the University next September for the 14th annual meeting of the Conference of Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, it was announced this month.

The meeting will be devoted to a consideration of how value symbols promote unity and disunity in democratic society and of how an understanding of them may serve democracy.

More than 100 of these specialists have just finished a four-day seminar at Columbia University, at which they studied the ways in which value symbols are used as tools of thought. This was one of several seminars, to be held every two months, in preparation for the Harvard meeting.

Dr. Louis Finkelstein, president of the conference, summed up the meaning and the work of the conference:

"We find ourselves surrounded by symbols, living by symbols. It is important, therefore, that we start thinking about them. The conference . . . has shown that in all fields of thought, the symbol communicates judgments of value and particularly moral judgments."

At the four-day seminar, Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard Observatory, was elected chairman of an eleven member executive committee.