A FURTHER STATISTICAL STUDY OF AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



THE advancement of science and the im- 

 provement of the conditions under which sci- 

 entific work is done are of such vast impor- 

 tance for society that even the most modest 

 attempt to introduce scientific method into 

 the study of these conditions has some value. 

 It is truly both exhilarating and appalling to 

 face the opportunities and responsibilities of 

 science and of scientific men. The applications 

 of science have quadrupled the wealth which 

 each individual produces and have doubled 

 the length of human life. In many cases the 

 gain has been greater than this. In trans- 

 porting freighl or printing a newspaper, the 

 products of each man's labor have been multi- 

 plied a hundredfold; in equal measure the 

 danger from smallpox, cholera and the plague 

 has been diminished. 



As intercommunication increases between 

 the nations, bringing them all within the circle 

 of our civilization, and as the total population 

 of the earth grows, the number of scientific 

 advances becomes continually larger and the 

 value of each of ever greater magnitude. It is 

 thus an economic law that the means of sub- 

 sistence tend to increase more rapidly than the 

 population. 1 When the applications of elec- 

 tricity increase the efficiency of each individ- 

 ual on the average by twenty per cent. as 

 may now be the case in civilized countries 

 the economic value would be in the neighbor- 

 hood of twenty billion dollars a year. In 



1 This inversion of the law of Malthus, to which 

 the writer has called attention on several occa- 

 sions (e. g., SCIENCE, December 18, 1896) has 

 recently been given a most interesting expression 

 by Professor T. H. Norton (The Popular Science 

 Monthly, September, 1910). Both the number and 

 the value of scientific advances being directly 

 proportional to the total population, the means of 

 subsistence tend to increase as the square of the 

 population. 



comparison with a sum so inconceivable, the 

 cost of science since the days of Faraday and 

 Henry is altogether insignificant. In the 

 United States at present there are scarcely 

 more than a thousand men engaged in serious 

 research work, and they do not on the average 

 devote more than half their time to it. 

 Throughout the world there may be seven to 

 ten times as many. The investigations of 

 these men may cost a total of $20,000,000 a 

 year, perhaps one thousandth of what may be 

 gained by the applications of electricity, or 

 one hundredth of what is saved by the use of 

 the phosphorus match. 



But man does not live alone by the applica- 

 tions of electricity and the use of the phos- 

 phorus match. Science has given us a new 

 heaven as well as a new earth, for it has 

 checked not only poverty and disease, but also 

 superstition, ignorance and unreason. It has 

 done away with slavery and with the need of 

 child labor; it has made excessive manual 

 labor by women or by men unnecessary. By 

 giving the possibility of leisure and education 

 to all it has made democracy possible. Fi- 

 nally science has not only given us leisure, but 

 also the means to occupy that leisure in a 

 worthy manner; its intellectual and emotional 

 appeal is almost equal to the art and religion 

 which were so much earlier in their origin. 



Science has been more successful in the 

 production of wealth than in its distribution 

 and use, and it has been more effective in its 

 control of the material world than of human 

 conduct; but this is a natural result of neces- 

 sary lines of development. The methods 

 which have slowly extended from physics 

 and chemistry to the more complicated phe- 

 nomena of biology will give us sciences of 

 psychology, sociology and anthropology and 

 applications of these sciences commensurate 



