THE PRODUCTION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 195 



patents, and to leave the industrial ^vorld to apply whatever 

 it could, obtaining its protection from the control of sub- 

 sidiary inventions, which almost always arise in the develop- 

 ment of a primary discovery. 



The conclusions reached, therefore, as to the system of 

 scientific research likely to develop in the future may be sum- 

 marized as follows: The advancement of science will continue 

 to depend upon the universities and upon the industrial lab- 

 oratories, but much of the responsibility may be transferred 

 to institutes devoted to special branches of science, probably 

 supported by public funds and, it is to be hoped, controlled 

 eventually by the scientific academies. If such a development 

 comes to pass, it may be expected that science will advance 

 more rapidly than at the present time; that society at large 

 will recognize its dependence on the advance of science to a 

 much greater extent than it does at the present time; and that 

 there will be a considerable amount of insistence by both the 

 general public and the official world on the planning and 

 control of the scientific work. 



There is at present much discussion of the value of plan- 

 ning for the promotion of scientific research, and the discus- 

 sion has become somewhat embittered by its relation to party 

 politics. The laissez-faire attitude of liberalism that per- 

 vaded intellectual thought in the nineteenth century is largely 

 displaced today by the desire for a planned economy, which 

 has developed from the writings of Marx, Engels, and their 

 successors. This change arises from several causes, but mainly 

 from the anxiety for the future that men feel today and from 

 the rising importance in the intellectual life of the world of 

 the engineers, to whom planning is a fundamental of life. 

 If you have been educated chiefly by reading Plato and 

 Euripides, you will have little faith in planning. If, on the 

 other hand, you have been educated at an engineering school 

 and have since spent your time in erecting buildings, mak- 

 ing bridges, or designing automobiles, you will have much 

 faith in planning. The people who dominated thought fifty 

 years ago had been educated as classicists; the people who 



