II, — ^THE RISE OF SCIENCE IN INDUSTRY 



[2. '''' Engineer if] g Science and Arty Another view of the relation 

 of science to technology is presented by A. L. Holley, who has already 

 been introduced as the hero of the preceding account. (A. L. Holley, 

 "The Inadequate Union of Engineering Science and Art," Transactions 

 of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, IV [1875-76], 191-207.)] 



The application of scientific methods to the inv estigation of natural 

 laws and to the conduct of the useful arts which are founded upon them, 

 is year by year mitigating the asperity and enlarging the outcome of 

 human endeavor. More notably, perhaps, are these the facts in that sys- 

 tem of productive and constructive arts of which engineering is the 

 general name. In metallurgical engineering especially, within the period 

 of our own recollection, how rapid has been the rate and how wide the 

 scope of progress: the scientific discovery and mining of metalliferous 

 veins; the economical separation and reduction of ores of every grade; 

 the production and regulation of high temperatures; the varied improve- 

 ments in the manufacture of iron, in saved heat and work, in uniformity 

 and range of products; and, most important of all, the creation and the 

 utilization, to be counted by the million tons a year, of the cheap con- 

 structive steels. 



Wonderful as this range and degree of development may appear to 

 the public eye, the close and thoughtful observer must, nevertheless, con- 

 clude that neither the profession nor the craft of engineering may con- 

 gratulate themselves too complaisantly, but that they should rather ac- 

 knowledge to each other the embarrassing incompleteness of the union 

 between engineering science and art. 



There is a small school of philosophers whom we may designate as 

 original investigators, men who come close to nature, who search into 

 first principles, and who follow that scientific and therefore fruitful 

 method by which the relations of matter and force are discovered, classi- 

 fied, and brought within the reach of practice. These wonderful men 

 do not indeed create the laws of nature, as they sometimes almost seem 

 to, but they go up into the trembling mountain and the thick darkness 

 and bring down the tables upon which they are written. 



There is a larger class of men whom we may designate as the school- 

 men; they are learned in the researches and conclusions of others, and 

 skilled in reasoning or speculating from these or from abstract data upon 

 the certain or probable results of physical and chemical combinations. 



And there is the great army of practicians, almost infinite in its de- 

 grees of quality, ranging from the mere human mechanism by which 

 mind lays hold of matter and force, through all the grades of practical 

 judgment and power. 



Let us first consider the matter from the "practical" man's stand- 

 point. Every day's experience teaches him that the men who speculate, 

 from secondhand data, upon the probable results of combinations of 

 forces and materials, are not the men who can best make these combina- 

 tions in practice, who intuitively know all the concealed pitfalls, such as 

 friction, that trick of nature which like the thousandth part of phos- 

 phorus, alters all the conditions of use in iron; nor are they the men who 

 can determine the completeness of these combinations, or read the rec- 



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