174 THE PATH OF SCIENCE 



vanced training in science could be obtained only under a 

 man who was himself actively engaged in promoting the 

 science that he taught. Through the nineteenth century, 

 the advancement of science was a function of the work of the 

 universities. 



Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the impact of 

 science upon the social life of the western world became evi- 

 dent. Lecturers and writers, such as Tyndall and Huxley, 

 were pointing out to the public that the advances which were 

 occurring in the scale of living arose from the growing knowl- 

 edge of natural science. And H. G. Wells had a considerable 

 influence upon public thought when he published in 1902 his 

 book entitled Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical 

 and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought.* In 

 this book Wells attempted to analyze the trends of invention 

 and development apparent at the beginning of the twentieth 

 century and to foresee how those new developments might 

 react on the structure of society. It is an excellent book, and, 

 looked at forty years later, it is astonishingly accurate, sug- 

 gesting that an anticipation of the general course of events 

 over a limited period is not at all impossible, though quite 

 obviously there will be a considerable distortion of the time 

 scale for the different phenomena. Wells, for example, seri- 

 ously underestimated the rate of development of aircraft. On 

 the other hand, he overestimated apparently the development 

 and influence of the technically trained men. 



In the nineteenth century there arose a number of technical 

 industries that depended primarily upon discoveries and in- 

 ventions made by some individual or group who developed 

 their original discoveries into an industrial process. The 

 history of many industries is that they were originated and 

 developed by a man of genius fully acquainted with the prac- 

 tice of the industry and with such theory as was then known; 

 that his successors failed to keep up with the progress of the 

 industry and with the theory of the cognate sciences; and 



* London, Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1902. 



