146 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



materials and phenomena, lias been divergence and not parallelism. If 

 amongst some people progress has been notable, in others there has been 

 degeneration or stagnation. The non-progressive and self-obstructive 

 common tendency of man has been emphasised by various anthropologists, 

 but by none more insistently than by Prof. Elliot Smith, who has done so 

 much to make us think again. Whatever may be our emotional reactions 

 to the theory of the origin and spread of civilisation maintained by him 

 and Dr. Perry — and what seems too good to be true is not for that reason 

 false— it has helped to bring about a big change in the general attitude 

 towards the problems of the evolution of culture, and light, as well as 

 smoke and heat, is emerging from the controversy. 



Discovery and Invention. 



Having given brief consideration to some subjective problems, we may 

 now return to the objective standpoint, and endeavour to distinguish 

 and define the human achievements which we call discoveries and 

 inventions. 



It is obvious that discovery lies at the root of all man's material 

 activities, since he must know something of the everyday behaviour of 

 material substances before he can apply or adapt natural objects to his 

 purposes. Discovery may result in the development of activities in which 

 method remains the essential and controlling factor, as in agriculture and 

 the domestication of animals, and we may then call the resulting system 

 of techniques a discovery-complex ; or it may initiate and further the 

 development of artefacts, which we may provisionally call inventions. 

 Perhaps few would be disposed to call an agricultural system an invention, 

 and the same applies to techniques of metallurgy or weaving. If these 

 arts are called discovery-complexes, what term may be applied to the 

 products, such as bronze and woven cloth ? Iron is an element, extracted 

 from its ores, and man has not yet reached the stage of inventing elements. 

 Bronze is an alloy of two elements, owing its first production to a series of 

 discoveries, and we can scarcely call it an invention. We may perhaps 

 best get out of the difl&culty by using the term discovery-product for all 

 artificially extracted, prepared, and compounded materials which have no 

 significant form imposed upon them, but are merely the raw materials for 

 the future production of shaped artefacts. 



We may apply the term invention, for general purposes,, to all shaped 

 or constructed artefacts, in spite of the fact that many simple types, such 

 as hand-axes and clay pots, are in reality products of discovery rather 

 than invention. 



If, as just suggested, woven cloth is classed with bronze and other 

 discovery-products, it has to be recognised that textiles and other fabrics 

 are in some respects intermediate between discovery-products and 

 inventions. Although they possess characters of construction independent 

 of those of the artefacts of which they are components, their origin and 

 development present problems differing from those of the evolution of 

 tools and appliances with which the idea of invention is commonly 

 associated. 



The application of the term ' an invention ' to any and every shaped 

 or constructed artefact can only be justified on the grounds of expediency, 



