170 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



started as an intellectual pursuit, and it still offers to mankind con- 

 tributions that transcend purely materialistic considerations. Herein 

 lie its points of contact with the other esthetic and intellectual activi- 

 ties, and its disciplines and methods, whose value in cultivating dis- 

 crimination and judgment in the average citizen constitutes one of the 

 strongest educational assets of our time. It is possible that this side 

 of science is being neglected and depleted by excessive preoccupation 

 with material advances. This is one of the problems arising from the 

 accelerating growth of scientific technology, and its solution demands 

 the establishment of a balanced perspective in which to view the 

 kaleidoscopic scene presented by our times. 



In order to develop a background for considering the delicate bal- 

 ance between material progress on the one hand, and the search for 

 new truths on the other, I propose to look again at the incentives and 

 objectives of science and the useful arts and to sketch a simple pattern 

 by which we may trace fundamentals through the maze of modern 

 technology. To achieve this balanced perspective, we shall attempt 

 to bring out resemblances and differences that exist between the 

 sciences and the arts, and consider human attributes and relationships 

 involved in their cultivation. This will lead us to the implications of 

 the growth of scientific technology in education, and consequent ex- 

 pansion in the scope of universities and colleges. Finally, we shall 

 note that the meager influence of scientific thought on the intellectual 

 outlook of society at large suggests that there are ideas arising in 

 the field of natural philosophy which might be profitably transplanted 

 into the field of moral philosophy. 



THE USEFUL ARTS 



From earliest times, man has sought by the use of his intelligence 

 and skill to adapt the resources of the physical world to the enhance- 

 ment of his own welfare, comfort, and security. Thanks to his capac- 

 ity for conceptual thought and his ability to communicate thought 

 through true speech, man has been able to preserve the results of his 

 efforts in a cumulative tradition. Thus, there arose over the centuries 

 the practice of the "useful arts," an activity that has supplied all the 

 material benefits which mankind has enjoyed and on which its very 

 existence depends. "Art" is a word used in a variety of senses, but 

 I suggest that in its principal connotation it refers to the reduction 

 of a complex of ideas to a form that appeals directly to the emotions 

 of man. This is a definition that covers the art of the painter, the 

 musician, the actor, and the poet, as well as that of the weaver or 

 designer, the silversmith, the engineer, and the physician. The in- 

 centives of the useful arts lay in a realization of the needs or wants 

 of society, of possible markets, and of military or economic problems. 

 The methods used by artists and artisans were purely empirical, based 



