66 THE PATH OF SCIENCE 



medicine. As James Breasted says: "In priestly wisdom, in 

 magic, in the formulation of wise proverbs, in medicine and 

 architecture ... he left so notable a reputation that his 

 name was never forgotten." * As we shall see later, another 

 period in which great progress was made in science followed 

 the death of Alexander, in the third century B.C. In the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the growth of modern 

 science began and has continued to accelerate to the present 

 day. 



The advance in wealth, comfort, and convenience that has 

 characterized the last three hundred years has been achieved 

 by a very small number of men, and even today our produc- 

 tive system is operated by a small group of men trained in 

 the sciences who utilize the knowledge that has accumulated 

 largely since the birth of Newton. This group is called "The 

 Fifth Estate" by Dr. A. D. Little in an essay in which he 

 discusses their relation to the rest of mankind.f He says: 



The fifth estate is composed of those who have the sim- 

 plicity to wonder, the ability to question, the power to 

 generalize, the capacity to apply. It is, in short, the com- 

 pany of thinkers, workers, expounders, and practitioners 

 upon whom the world is absolutely dependent for the pres- 

 ervation and advancement of that organized knowledge 

 which we call science. 



Little considered that the effective number of those indi- 

 viduals was very small. In 1928, he guessed that there might 

 be less than a hundred thousand in the world. 



The history of the development of science is the history of 

 the evolution of this small body of specialized workers, who 

 originally took an interest in science as amateurs— those who 

 loved the subject— and only in recent times became profes- 

 sionals devoting their whole time to study and the advance- 

 ment of knowledge. 



* James Breasted, A History of Egypt, p. 112, New York, Charles 

 Scribner's Sons, 1912. 



f A. D. Little, The Handwriting on the Wall, p. 253, Boston, Little, 

 Brown and Co. and Atlantic Monthly Press, 1928. 



