Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/611

 PLACE OF SCIENCE IN MODERN CIVILIZATION 595

by a different cultural and industrial situation. 8 In the life of the new era conceptions of authentic rank and differential dignity have grown weaker in practical affairs, and notions of preferen- tial reality and authentic tradition similarly count for less in the new science. The forces at work in the external world are con- ceived in a less animistic manner, although anthropomorphism still prevails, at least to the degree required in order to give a dramatic interpretation of the sequence of phenomena.

The changes in the cultural situation which seem to have had the most serious consequences for the methods and animus of scientific inquiry are those changes that took place in the field of industry. Industry in early modern times is a fact of relatively greater preponderance, more of a tone-giving factor, than it was under the regime of feudal status. It is the characteristic trait of the modern culture, very much as exploit and fealty were the characteristic cultural traits of the earlier times. This early- modern industry is, in an obvious and convincing degree, a matter of workmanship. The same has not been true in the same de- gree either before or since. The workman, more or less skilled and with more or less specialized efficiency, was the central figure in the cultural situation of the time ; and so the concepts of the scientists came to be drawn in the image of the workman. The dramatizations of the seqence of external phenomena worked out under the impulse of the idle curiosity were then conceived in terms of workmanship. Workmanship gradually supplanted differential dignity as the authoritative canon of scientific truth, even on the higher levels of speculation and research. This, of course, amounts to saying in other words that the law of cause and effect was given the first place, as contrasted with dialectical consistency and authentic tradition. But this early-modern law of cause and effect the law of efficient causes is of an anthro- pomorphic kind. "Like causes produce like effects," in much the

8 As currently employed, the term "pragmatic" is made to cover both conduct looking to the agent's preferential advantage, expedient conduct, and workmanship directed to the production of things that may or may not be of advantage to the agent. If the term be taken in the latter meaning, the culture of modern times is no less "pragmatic" than that of the Middle Ages. It is here intended to be used in the former sense.