COSMOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY 105 



individual cosmology, a substratum of identity in the cosmologies of 

 all scientists makes possible the unity of scientific endeavor. 



Consider also the indirect eflFect of science on itself: everywhere 

 science modifies, and makes more uniform, the scientifically relevant 

 climate of opinion. Our aesthetic sensibilities are deeply conditioned 

 by the simple majesty of certain scientific theories incorporated in 

 cosmology. Poincare exclaims : 



One may dream a harmonious world, but how far the real world will 

 leave it behind! The greatest artists that ever lived, the Greeks, made 

 their heavens; how shabby it is beside the tiTie heavens, ours! 



Our ethical sensibilities are not unaflFected by the concept of an evo- 

 lution controlled by blind natural selection produced in the struggle 

 for existence. Not even our moral judgments are left wholly un- 

 changed, for as Butterfield observes: 



. . . the so-called "scientific revolution," popularly associated with 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, . . . outshines everything 

 since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Refor- 

 mation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, 

 within the system of medieval Christendom. Since it changed the char- 

 acter of man's habitual mental operations even in the conduct of the 

 nonmaterial sciences, while transforming the whole diagram of the 

 physical universe and the very texture of human life itself, it looms so 

 large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern 

 mentality that our customary periodisation of European history has 

 become an anachronism and an encumbrance. 



Technology 



Like science itself, technology comprises both activity ( of engineers, 

 technologists, practicing physicians, etc.) and the fruits of the ac- 

 tivity (factories, goods, and services). Living as we do in a world of 

 scientific technology, we find it almost incredible that until quite 

 recently technology should have led the way— with science following, 

 rather ineflFectually, in its train. But consider the situation in, say, 

 prescientific iron metallurgy. The metallurgist knew that, to make 

 iron, one must heat its ore with charcoal under certain conditions. In 

 the group of colligative relations defining this and other operations 

 of his craft, the metallurgist held prescriptions for success which 

 science was for long wholly unable to improve. 



