Science in Public Affairs 



methods of scientific education which are remov- 

 ing the barriers between the scientific theorist and 

 the workman. The opening to all of an education 

 in which what is learned in the schoolroom is 

 applied in the workshop, where the "abstract" 

 truths of geometry or physics are given concrete 

 meaning through the use of instruments, where 

 hand and brain are brought into systematic and 

 organic co-operation, such an education will react 

 upon the industrial arts to an extent which can 

 hardly be measured. Every intelligent workman 

 is a potential inventor ; let him understand what 

 he is doing he will be impelled to try to do it 

 better and more easily, he will rebel against mere 

 imitation and will seek creation. As soon as we 

 discard the "heroic" view of invention and re- 

 cognise that it is the most general and the most 

 wasted of human abilities, we shall begin to realise 

 what a truly scientific education may contribute 

 to industrial progress. A hierarchy of scientific 

 research, the hodmen of science, collecting and sift- 

 ing little heaps of special knowledge and throwing 

 light on detailed problems, the middlemen receiv- 

 ing their results, tabulating and comparing them 

 with results from other sources, the philosophers 

 of science remodelling and restating the more 

 general scientific laws to accord with fuller know- 

 ledge this hierarchy, not standing aside from the 

 work-a-day world in academic isolation, but in vital 

 touch with every industrial art and profession, con- 

 tinually receiving from it new facts and continually 

 vitalising it by new principles and hypotheses, such 



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