IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
17 
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
THE SOCIAL SERVICE OF SCIENCE. 
BY WILLIAM HARMON NORTON. 
The extent to which society may may be considered as 
an organism is still, I understand, a matter of controversy 
with sociologists. But without awaiting its adjudication, 
we may surely make use of a simile as ancient as that of 
the Apostle who spoke of individual Christians as members 
of one body, or as that of the wise old Roman, who taught 
the mutinous plebs the parable of the body politic, all of 
whose members were nourished by the well-fed patrician 
belly, and consider together this evening the social func- 
tion of science in the body social, 
v It may at least supply a convenient means of classifying 
the various services of science to the commonweal, if we 
consider it not so much, perhaps, a distinct corporal 
member as a growth force, ever accelerating the evolution 
of society, providing it with means of defense, increasing 
its muscular energy, and perfecting its systems of circula- 
tion and communication. And if to these services we add 
the reaction upon the social mind of the physical environ- 
ment which science has provided, and the direct influence 
of scientific truth, we shall then have sketched at least 
the main functions of science in social evolution. 
y Among the first services to society which our biologic 
analogues suggest is that of defense. Under the growth 
force of science the body social has accomplished an evolu- 
tion similar to that which brought the vertebrates, assumed 
to have been at first naked and defenseless, to the stage of 
the armored fishes of the Devonian, and which in the Terti- 
ary changed tooth to tusk, nail to claw, and frontal boss 
to horn and antler. 
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