Januaey 5, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



recently come over the public in their atti- 

 tude towards us. They believe that they 

 have really discovered what we are, they 

 recognize that we are more respectable than 

 they used to suppose and the question has 

 been asked more than once : What shall 

 we, the public, do to help scientific men? 

 That that question should be correctly an- 

 swered is certainly of extreme importance 

 to us. It is, therefore, worth our while 

 to consider the recent change in the atti- 

 tude of the public toward us, the question 

 how far that attitude is correct from our 

 point of view and how far their ideas of 

 what should be done for us correspond 

 with what we really desire and need. 



First, what do they think of us? The 

 lights, or the supposed lights of science, 

 have always been objects of interest to the 

 world. The mass of scientific men have, 

 on the other hand, counted for little. The 

 public have always needed some idols to 

 worship and in their indiscriminate collec- 

 tion of gods there have always been a few 

 taken from the scientific world. Their 

 wonderful achievements have been magni- 

 fied beyond all recognition, their precocious 

 sayings have been recorded and their opin- 

 ions on theology, music, politics and many 

 other subjects about which they knew noth- 

 ing in particular have been paraded before 

 us. Once in a while when the flashlight of 

 the caricaturist has been thrown upon 

 them, they have been shown to have some 

 human weaknesses and the learned pro- 

 fessor who is supposed to be discussing 

 evolution or the vortex theory with his 

 neighbor at some fashionable reception has 

 been represented as really only making re- 

 marks about the ladies present while im- 

 bibing fluids which it is said retard rather 

 than aid the metamorphosis of brain tissue. 

 Those who were not so fortunate as to be 

 counted among the lights of science were 

 passed over as having perhaps an academic 

 importance, but of no account in the real 



world, being both impractical and impe- 

 cunious. The question, what is the good of 

 science, Avas supposed to be unanswerable 

 and it seemed to follow as a corollary that 

 a man who spent his time on things which 

 were good for nothing must himself be 

 good for nothing. 



All that has changed and the traditional 

 scientific man has disappeared almost as 

 completely as the traditional Yankee of 

 the stage. The change came gradually 

 but the proof that it had come was brought 

 before us suddenly. In 1902 there was 

 called in New York a meeting of those who 

 were designated by the picturesque expres- 

 sion, captains of industry. To that meet- 

 ing representatives of science were invited, 

 not as lions to be stared at, but to sit with 

 the leaders of the industrial and commer- 

 cial world as representatives of science, and 

 not only of applied science, but of pure 

 science. As the captains of industry were 

 supposed to be men of force in organizing 

 and to have a keen insight into men and 

 things, we had a right to feel that science 

 was honored, perhaps not more than ever 

 before, but for a reason for which it had 

 not been honored before in this country. 

 The fact that since that date the reputation 

 of some of the captains of industry has 

 suffered an eclipse, does not alter the fact 

 that to be considered a captain of industry 

 was, in the eyes of the public, enviable. 

 The conception of a scientific man as a 

 captain of industry means simply the ac- 

 knowledgment that science has a practical 

 relation to the world and that fortunately 

 the public have advanced far enough to 

 see, although perhaps somewhat dimly, that 

 pure science sooner or later develops into 

 applied science. The leaders of science are 

 to be placed in the class of organizers, man- 

 agers of a sort of scientific trust. This is 

 science up to date and the public are right 

 when they regard science as an organiza- 

 tion. But they are only partly right. 



