102 HISTORY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF SCIENCE 



APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE TO MODERN INDUSTRY 



The value of science in modern industry, commerce, and 

 agriculture is so generally appreciated that any lengthy dis- 

 cussion is quite unnecessary. Exploitation of nature by 

 means of scientific knowledge is the most conspicuous 

 feature in the history of civilization during the past two 

 hundred years. Since the middle of the eighteenth century, 

 the western world has undergone almost as complete a 

 metamorphosis as it did in the thousand years during which 

 the Teutonic barbarians were changed into the civilized 

 peoples of the Renaissance. The steps in this profound re- 

 organization, which has produced a culture based upon 

 science, must be considered, if we would understand the 

 place of any particular science in the twentieth century. 



In the past, commercial intercourse has brought exchange 

 of ideas as well as goods; and as a result, civilizations have 

 been made anew. Ideas, like diseases, follow the routes of 

 trade. The Phencecians were the earliest common carriers 

 of the world; through them the influence of the Egyptian 

 and of the Mesopotamian cultures was extended along the 

 shores of the Mediterranean until it quickened western 

 Europe. Later, the commerce of Greece was the initial 

 impulse to the establishment of Greek colonies in Sicily and 

 southern Italy and to the westward spread of Hellenic 

 civilization. During the Medieval Period, commerce with 

 the countries about the eastern end of the Mediterranean 

 was an important factor in preserving the tradition of an 

 ancient learning commensurate with the majestic ruins of 

 the Roman world which Europe beheld in Italy, France, and 

 Spain. We have referred earlier to the development of an 

 industrial aristocracy, founded upon the trade of the Italian 

 cities with the Orient, and its relation to the intellectual 

 awakening of the Renaissance. The Mediterranean was the 

 great trade-route of the world before the geographical dis- 

 coveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Until the 



