274 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1160 



its relation to engineering seems to-day to 

 be in an intermediate stage of its asymptotic 

 evolution from the state of a follower to 

 that of an absolute dictator. The first rea- 

 son why this evolution has to follow this 

 general course is that application must 

 needs precede correlation. 



Man like the other animals from the very 

 first can survive only as he applies na- 

 ture's laws to his needs, as he conforms to 

 them, so that he begins applying them in- 

 conceivably earlier than he begins to for- 

 mulate them or even to be capable of for- 

 mulating them. 



The second reason lies in the unfathom- 

 able complexity of the laws on which engi- 

 neering must needs be based. 



The engineering of the savage is military. 

 His existence depends on his power to Mil 

 his enemies ami incidentally his game by 

 means of weapons made fi'om the materials 

 at hand. Of these materials he knows only 

 certain prominent properties irrelated to 

 each other and to the rest of nature. If 

 this knowledge can be said to consist of 

 laws they are only the most minute frag- 

 ments when compared even with the frag- 

 ments of laws which we have joined up. 

 They are fragments comminuted to the 

 second degree. The explanation of these 

 fragments the savage has never sought. 

 Yet the laws themselves were as complex 

 when our forefathers were naked as they 

 are to-day. The Bornean or Fiji knows 

 that wood is strong, stone stronger, and 

 iron stronger stiU, though corruptible by 

 rust. Armed with this and all other knowl- 

 edge which he has he destroys those who 

 else would destroy him. The survival is 

 not of those who formulate knowledge but 

 of those who best apply it, and so there 

 evolves a race which applies successfully 

 the laws which it may never even think of 

 thinking of. 



By and by evolution lifts certain men 



so far up out of the imperative need of 

 ceaseless viliganee lest they be slain by 

 their fellows or by nature as to give them 

 the opportunity to consider their environ- 

 ment, and note the analogies between phe- 

 nomena which at first seem irrelated. 

 These are the first men of science. Before 

 them the ratio of observed to correlated 

 phenomena was that of a small body to zero, 

 and hence was infinity. With them that 

 ratio fell from infinity to finiteness, but it 

 was still extremely small. 



As the accumulation of observed phe- 

 nomena goes on and with it the organiza- 

 tion and elaboration of society, certain men 

 come to excel their fellows sufficiently in 

 their mastery of this knowledge, and in 

 their ingenuity in applying it, to become 

 recognized as a special class, engineers. 

 More slowly the accumulation of observed 

 analogies becomes so great that those who 

 master it become recognized in their turn 

 as a class, the natural philosophers or 

 men of science. 



These philosophers address themselves at 

 first to correlating phenomena, which, how- 

 ever familiar, are known as yet only em- 

 pirically, and thus to explaining that which 

 engineering has long known how to do, has 

 known in part since the days of Assyria, 

 of Homer, and of Kephren. But this is to 

 trail after engineering, to explain its ex- 

 ploits as the minstrel glorifies those of the 

 warrior. By and by science becomes able, 

 through its accumulation of correlations, to 

 point out to the engineer how he may better 

 his service to man. But this is to snatch a 

 share in the leadership, and add it to the 

 continuing labor of correlation. 



From this time on science increases con- 

 tinuously the share which it has in the di- 

 rection of engineering. It is engaged ever 

 more and more in discovering and simul- 

 taneously correlating new knowledge, and 

 less and less in the gradually vanishing 



