COSMOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY 91 



and alleviating its hardships, some men have sought and valued 

 scientific knowledge read as technologic power. From Bacon to such 

 as Bernal in our own day, these men have pursued science with 

 technologic intent. By other men, from Kepler and Newton to such 

 as Sherrington and Polanyi, science has been pursued and valued for 

 its cosmologic significance. Science may then be conceived as the 

 search for beautiful mathematical harmonies implicit in the cosmos 

 and discoverable by man, or as the foundation of "natural religion." 

 Today men may pursue scientific knowledge "for its own sake," but 

 of course the \'aluation then set on "pure" learning is itself a cosmo- 

 logic judgment. 



Support. Like other humans, scientists need food and shelter; they 

 need, in addition, the physical equipment their work demands. Until 

 such time as science affords them financial support, men lacking in- 

 dependent means cannot easily function as scientists, and few of 

 them will even study science. Probably the distribution of ecologic 

 niches for scientists affects the direction of scientific endeavor; cer- 

 tainly the extent of the availability of such niches strongly affects the 

 scale of scientific endeavor. Edelstein finds ancient science fatally 

 weakened by lack of social support, but right up to 1800 there are 

 very few posts for scientists, and very few who make their livings as 

 scientists. Significantly enough, the word "scientist" is of coinage only 

 slightly more than a century old; only then did the existence of a 

 substantial professional group raise the need for a group designation. 



When the nonscientist supports science most often his interest is 

 not in science as such, but only in science as contributor to the cos- 

 mology or technology in which he does take an active interest. Sup- 

 port given out of concern for technology appears quite early: the 

 Ptolemys had quite practical reasons for supporting the Alexandrian 

 Museum. On the other hand, such support dwindled to nothing dur- 

 ing the Dark Ages in which man's attention turned from this world 

 to another. As the modern era opened, experimental science gained a 

 foothold in the universities as the affiliate of already established 

 technologic and cosmologic concerns; i.e., as a subject studied by 

 students of medicine and divinity, respectively. In this period Bacon 

 preaches support of science both as the handmaiden of theology and 

 as the great root of technologic advance. Bacon's estimate of the 

 potential capacity of science to produce such advance far exceeded 

 its actual capacity then, and for some two centuries thereafter. The 



