SCIENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA 



cess will abstract science stop in sinking pneumatic piles through wrecks 

 and boulders, in tunnelling rocks traversed by subterranean streams and 

 beds of quicksand, in cheaply applying hoisting, ventilating and drain- 

 ing machinery to mines where the scene and conditions of operation are 

 constantly shifting, in firmly founding heavy and vibrating machinery 

 on treacherous ground, in handling and casting melted steel, in con- 

 structing refractory metallurgical vessels, in delivering bars red-hot and 

 crooked in infinite directions to a roll train, in fabricating durable breech- 

 loading cannon, in building boilers that shall provide for vaporization, 

 circulation, separation, cleaning and durability, in designing enginery like 

 the horseshoe machine to shape metals, in proportioning gas-furnaces, in 

 submarine warfare, in aerial navigation, in machine tools, in traction en- 

 gines, in scaffolding and erection, in railway running-gear, in forming 

 artificial stone under water, in permanent way, in coal-cutting, in dredg- 

 ing machinery, in moulding and casting, in brick machinery, in tube- 

 drawing, in coal-burning, in pavements? Limited or impossible as would 

 be the progress of engineering arts in the absence of that knowledge and 

 those methods which are imparted in schools, delay and failure would 

 hardly be less conspicuous if the schoolmen should stay in the schools 

 and thence attempt the application of abstract science, or expect mere 

 workmen to apply it by hearkening to their directions. 



I hope it may not seem that the dignity of abstract scientific investi- 

 gation is undervalued by the utilizers of nature's powers and materials, 

 or that any considerations of profit obscure, even in the average com- 

 mercial mind, the splendor of those achievements made in the mere love 

 of truth, with thought of neither commercial application nor pecuniary 

 reward — achievements which distinguish such names as Faraday, Bunsen, 

 Leverrier, Mayer, Joule, Henry, Darwin, and Tyndall. Do not their suc- 

 cesses rather encourage us, in our lower sphere, to more persistently 

 pursue the method of these great discoverers — the original investigation 

 of Nature's truths? Not less literally than in the poet's fancy, 



"To him who in the love of Nature holds 

 Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 

 A various language." 



To the skilled artisan she reveals herself as truly though not as 

 widely as to the philosopher. In the aphorism of Goethe, "Mankind 

 dwell in her and she in them. With all men she plays a game for love, 

 and rejoices the more they win." 



But the undervaluation of the study of objects and phenomena by 

 schoolmen, is not the principal hindrance to the complete union of sci- 

 ence and art. A greater obstacle is the combined misapprehension and 

 ignorance on the part of a large class of "practical" men, of what they 

 are pleased to call "theory," meaning by theory, something which is 

 likely to be discordant with fact — or possibly with the interests of the 

 craft. We can hardly complain that their objection is ill-grounded, as 

 far as it is grounded upon the practice of theoretical men; but the world 

 has a right to complain of their narrowness of observation, of their 

 stolid incomprehension of the results of science, of that pride of igno- 

 rance, of that bigotry, of that positive fear of the diffusion of knowledge, 



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