Januabt 1, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



face of the disappearance of coal and 

 petroleum will be imperative. For success 

 in this, upon which in the immediate 

 future the welfare of the race and ulti- 

 mately its very perpetuity is to depend, we 

 must look to science. Mere ingenuity or 

 inventiveness, however widely developed, 

 will not suffice. The inventor and the engi- 

 neer can but utilize and apply the material 

 which the man of science provides and 

 with the exhaustion of our stores of scien- 

 tific knowledge civilization must halt. 



It is of this fundamental relation of sci- 

 ence to the progress of our civilization 

 that I wish to speak. The fact that ma- 

 terial progress is based upon science seems 

 to be but dimly understood. It appears to 

 be generally supposed that it is to the 

 inventor and to those who use' his devices 

 that we owe our present advantages over 

 our forefathers. I would not belittle the 

 achievements of the so-called practical 

 man, but the public must be taught that 

 application can never run ahead of the 

 knowledge to be applied and that the only 

 road to higher achievement in practical 

 things is by the further development of 

 pure science. 



The main product of science, using that 

 word in its broadest sense, is knmdedge; 

 among its by-products are the technological 

 arts, inchiding invention, engineering in all 

 its branches and modern industry. Not all 

 industries have attained the character of 

 a technological art. Burning the woods to 

 drive out game and thus obtain a dinner, 

 is a form of industry. Like it in character 

 are some very large industries, such as 

 agriculture of the sort that impoverishes 

 the soil; lumbering that destroys forests 

 and incidentally ruins rivers and increases 

 erosion; coke making by processes that 

 waste forty per cent, of the energy of coal. 

 The production of power from coal by 

 means of the steam boiler and the recipro- 

 cating engine we at present regard as a 



highly developed technological art; yet it 

 is a process which at the very best converts 

 less than ten per cent, of the total stored 

 energy of the fuel into available form. 

 If the ultimate purpose of this power is 

 the production of light, we by our present 

 methods suffer a second waste of ninety 

 per cent, or more, so that the efficiency of 

 the combined processes is but a fraction of 

 one per cent. These things are excusable 

 while ignorance lasts. They become crim- 

 inal with realization of the results and are 

 inconceivable in a community of fully de- 

 veloped civilization. Science paves the 

 way for the gradual supplanting of these 

 barbarous methods by more refined and 

 rational processes, but they often persist 

 long after they are known to be injurious 

 to the public welfare because they happen 

 to serve some selfish individual or corpo- 

 rate purpose. In such cases it is to science 

 again that we must look for the develop- 

 ment of an enlightened public opinion that 

 will end them. 



Nearly all really important technical ad- 

 vances have their origin in communities 

 where the great fundamental sciences are 

 most extensively and successfully culti- 

 vated. In the field of artificial illumina- 

 tion, to take a concrete example, each suc- 

 cessive improvement over the tallow-dips 

 and whale-oil lamps of our ancestors has 

 come to us from over the water. 



The first building to be lighted by coal- 

 gas was the chemical laboratory at Wiirtz- 

 burg (1789). Illuminating oils were being 

 made from petroleum by , Binney and 

 Young, in England (1850), at a time when 

 we were bottling our crude oil and selling 

 it for liniment. 



During the later years of the nineteenth 

 century occurred the sudden development 

 . of arc-lighting in this country ; a change 

 from darkness to light unprecedented and 

 almost unimaginable. This magical trans- 

 formation from conditions but little re- 



