SCIENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA 



The whole change has arisen from the new scientific information. 

 Science, conceived not so much in its principles as in its results, is an 

 obvious store-house of ideas for utilisation. But, if we are to understand 

 what happened during the century, the analogy of a mine is better than 

 that of a store-house. Also, it is a great mistake to think that the bare 

 scientific idea is the required invention, so that it has only to be picked 

 up and used. An intense period of imaginative design lies between. One 

 element in the new method is just the discovery of how to set about 

 bridging the gap between the scientific ideas, and the ultimate product. 

 It is a process of disciplined attack upon one difficulty after another. 

 The possibilities of modern technology were first in practice real- 

 ised in England, by the energy of a prosperous middle class. Accord- 

 ingly, the industrial revolution started there. But the Germans explicitly 

 realised the methods by which the deeper veins in the mine of science 

 could be reached. They abolished haphazard methods of scholarship. In 

 their technological schools and universities progress did not have to wait 

 for the occasional genius, or the occasional lucky thought. Their feats of 

 scholarship during the nineteenth century were the admiration of the 

 world. This discipline of knowledge applies beyond technology to pure 

 science, and beyond science to general scholarship. It represents the 

 change from amateurs to professionals. 



There have always been people who devoted their lives to definite 

 regions of thought. In particular, lawyers and the clergy of the Chris- 

 tian churches form obvious examples of such specialism. But the full 

 self-conscious tjealisation of the power of professionalism in knowledge 

 in all its departments, and of the way to produce the professionals, and 

 the importance of knowledge to the advance of technology, and of the 

 methods by which abstract knowledge can be connected with technol- 

 ogy, and of the boundless possibilities of technological advance, — the 

 realisation of all these things was first completely attained in the nine- 

 teenth century; and among the various countries, chiefly in Germany. 



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