THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 13 



In Russia there has been a revolution, because some- 

 thing has come to an end. In Asia Minor the Turks are 

 recreating novel forms of social life, because something 

 has come to an end. In the larger nations of Western 

 Europe, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, England, there is a 

 turmoil ( 

 an end.* 



turmoil of reconstruction, because something has come to 



But men do not look back ^\ hen they come to the parting 

 of the ways; they look forward. And the cause of these "revo- 

 lutions," these "ferments," these "turmoils" is applied science 

 and the promise that men can see in it. C. A. Beard in his 

 introduction to Bury's Idea of Progress {loc. cit., page 6) 

 points out that the basis of modern civilization is technology, 

 which indicates the methods by which the conquest of nature 

 can be effected. Technology involves not only the existing 

 machines and processes but still more a philosophy and a 

 method linked, as it were, to the methods and spirit of 

 science. Moreover, technology is world-wide and universal, 

 available to all nations and affecting all classes. Thus tech- 

 nology is at once the source and the justification for the idea 

 of progiess. Mankind has not merely advanced from primi- 

 tive culture; it has developed a working method for a con- 

 tinuation of that advance. There is no reason to believe that 

 the present civilization ^vill run its cycle and relapse into 

 barbarism; there are no limits to the possibilities of scien- 

 tific discovery and its application to the wants of man. The 

 solution of a scientific problem does not close a chapter; it 

 opens new problems. Moreover, advances in one field of 

 science make possible advances in another. The solution 

 of a physical problem throws light upon chemistry and that, 

 in its turn, on physiology or on medicine. Until man has no 

 more curiosity and no more ^vants, his quest for kno^vledge 

 will persist and the application of that knowledge will con- 

 tinue. 



W^hat distinguishes the present change in sociological con- 



* A. N. Whitehead, "The Study of the Past— Its Uses and Its 

 Dangers," Harvard Business Review, XI, No. 4, 436 (1933). 



