44 THE PATH OF SCIENCE 



velopment of the gasoline engine dependent upon the under- 

 standing of Carnot's cycle. It is easier to improve engines if 

 you understand thermodynamics; but the men ^vho invented 

 the engines did not understand thermodynamics, and many 

 of those A\ ho improved them almost to the present level did 

 so ^vithout any knowledge of the scientific principles which 

 underlay their ^vork. The greatest inventor of all time, 

 Thomas A. Edison, was not a scientist and was not even 

 interested in science. He w-as interested in doing: thinQ^s and 

 not in understanding how he could do them. Nevertheless, 

 the advance of technology has been greatly stimulated by the 

 advance of scientific knowledge and, to a considerable extent, 

 has been made possible by that advance. Edison, for in- 

 stance, observed the Edison effect; that is, from a glowing 

 filament in a lamp, a current would pass through the vacuum 

 to a second filament in the same lamp. But Edison was not 

 interested in studying this further or, at any rate, did not 

 do so, and it w^as left for Owen Richardson to sho^v the origin 

 of the current and for J. A. Fleming and his successors to 

 design the electronic tubes, on which so much of our recent 

 electrotechnology is based. The ^vhole technology of elec- 

 tricity is based on scientific discoveries, and without those 

 discoveries the technologists ^vould probably never have ap- 

 plied electrical methods, because there is no convenient 

 source of electricity in nature except the intractable lightning 

 flash and the phenomena of static electricity, which have 

 even at present very little application in practice. 



Technology even today proceeds by trial and error, the 

 experimental method, but as a result of our knowledge of 

 pure science, we have learned to experiment more actively 

 and more efficiently. Science suggests to the technologist ex- 

 periments by means of which progress can be made. Tech- 

 nology is not an offspring of science; it is a separate activity 

 of mankind, but it is very much stimulated by the other 

 human activities of scientific study and research. 



The special activity of mankind which we call science began 

 as a classification of facts. Certain types of men have a desire 



