46 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



methods are secondary. To say that science leads to, or suggests, some 

 general ' interpretation ' of things, is to say what may or may not be 

 true ; but the saying, in either case, transcends science itself and changes 

 the man of science into the philosopher. It must, indeed, be acknowl- 

 edged that science, despite the immensity of its scope and the multitu- 

 dinous variety of its subject-matter, confines its followers within rela- 

 tively narrow limits; the shadow of the three adjectives is always upon 

 them ; and it is just because science is thus narrower than life that the 

 man of science, unless he be of a certain temperament, is tempted to 

 transgress the limits, and to betake himself in the long run to philosophy 

 — or to spiritism. 



V 



Over against science, now, stands what we have called technology. 

 In a certain restricted meaning, this term — which we have so far em- 

 ployed without comment — is familiar enough; the greatly extended 

 meaning which it is here to receive must be justified by the sequel. The 

 word is used henceforth to cover, in the broadest way, the activities that 

 are ordinarily and misleadingly referred to as " applied science " ; such 

 things, that is to say, as engineering and medicine, in all their branches ; 

 such things as scientific agriculture, and domestic science, and school 

 hygiene, and industrial chemistry, and eugenics. All these disciplines 

 have a common character^, by which they are set off from science ; for, if 

 science is defined by its point of view, technology (in the new and wider 

 sense) is defined by its end or goal. Technology thus has its own nar- 

 rowness ; it is held down to the pursuit of some particular practical end ; 

 but this narrowness is different from the limitation of science. The 

 technologist may change his point of view as often as he likes; he will 

 use any method that promises to be serviceable ; he will attack any prob- 

 lem that rises in his path. The result is that a " system " of technology 

 is likely to appear to the man of science a mixed medley of more or 

 less unrelated knowledge, and that a pure science is likely to appear to 

 the technologist an example of fine-spun and quite needless consistency. 

 A text-book of engineering will range from sections on pure mathe- 

 matics and pure mechanics to practical directions for the setting-up of 

 instruments and the reading of indicator cards; and a system of medi- 

 cine, in the same way, will skip from theory to practise and from prac- 

 tise back again to theory within the boundaries of a single paragraph. 2 



2 Consider, for example, what is probably one of the last attempts to treat 

 the whole of mechanical engineering in a single volume, Lineham's "Text-book" 

 (1902) ; read and abstract Ch. IX., On Energy and the Transmission of Power to 

 Machines: or consult any chapter of suoh a work as Thompson's "Practical 

 Medicine. ' ' Eeading of this sort is instructive, not only to the man of science, 

 but also to the technologist whose interests lie in other fields than those covered 

 by the book under examination. When the engineer or the physician has been 

 shown that the eugenist derives his materials from pathology and medicine, from 



