THE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE 169 



error is even more dangerous. Science, it is often urged 

 (perhaps not in these actual words), is all very well ; 

 it may even be indispensable ; but it must be the right 

 kind of science. The kind of science that is needed in 

 everyday life is not that of the pure theorist, but that 

 which every practical man is bound to acquire for 

 himself in the ordinary conduct of his business. 



Again, it will be well to begin by admitting that there 

 is some truth in the contention that the practical man 

 is likely to manage the business in which he has been 

 immersed all his life better than one who has no experience 

 of any conditions more complicated than those of the 

 laboratory. No doubt scientific men of great eminence 

 often prove as great failures in industry as commercial 

 men would in pure science. But we have already noticed 

 that no practical problem is wholly scientific ; there are 

 questions of ends as well as of means. The scientific 

 man in industry is doubtless apt to be led astray by 

 forgetting that the object of industry is to produce 

 goods, and that processes, however scientifically interest- 

 ing they may be, are commercially worthless unless they 

 decrease the expenditure of capital and labour necessary 

 to obtain a given amount of goods. Again, at the 

 present time at least, all questions of means have not 

 been brought within the range of science ; the estimation 

 of demand and the foreseeing of supply are matters not 

 yet reduced to any scientific basis. Besides, no man is 

 expert in all sciences, and the fact that he is familiar 

 with one may tend to hide from him his ignorance of 

 another. All this may be readily granted ; but all 

 it proves is that something besides scientific knowledge 

 is required for the competent conduct of affairs. Because 

 the man of science needs the help of the man trained in 

 commerce or administration, it does not follow that the 

 latter does not need the help of the former. 



The attack on the practical value of science that we 



