SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY 



J. A. HOBSON, M.A. 



UNTIL comparatively recent times the natural 

 sciences were pursued largely in a spirit of 

 disinterested curiosity for the intellectual fruits 

 they were capable of yielding. Though astronomy 

 afforded important utility in the calculations of 

 time and seasons and in the art of navigation, 

 while geology, chemistry, and physics made in- 

 cidental contributions to the arts of industry, these 

 studies served through the Middle Ages chiefly 

 to feed a romantic intellectualism in the learned 

 classes: though botany, zoology, and other organic 

 sciences more closely subserved certain direct uses 

 of humanity, they entered very slowly and slightly 

 into industrial reform. Even mechanics, though 

 more definitely utilitarian in origin than other 

 sciences, was largely perverted to purposes of more 

 or less futile ingenuity, and yielded little economic 

 service until the era of the industrial revolution. 



The domination of industry in modern times, 

 and the eagerness to wrest as quickly as possible 

 from all the natural sciences the industrial aids 

 they are capable of rendering, have grown so 

 insistent as even to threaten the larger liberty of 



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