Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/769

 SCIENCE AND CITIZENSHIP 753

rivalries, jealousies, feuds, and bickerings. The mathematicians, for instance, are apt to form an exclusive caste apart, holding no converse with groups which know not their particular shib- boleths. Again, the spectacle might have been seen, at a recent meeting of the British Association, of rival biological factions warmly anathematizing each other. A momentous and historic instance of scientific sectionalism is seen in the work now in progress, which is probably the largest co-operative enterprise yet undertaken by modern scientists. A few years ago the Royal Society convened in London a great gathering a sort of Council of Trent of scientific fathers, representing all the leading academies and societies of Europe and America. The purpose of this great gathering was to decide upon an authorized canon of the sacred texts. A momentous decision was reached. It was concluded that a sufficient degree of traditional sanctity did not attach to the writings of the economists, the psychologists, the sociologists, and some other orders. The writings of these were accordingly omitted from that authorized canon, which is now in course of actual compilation under the title of The Inter- national Catalogue of Scientific Papers. It is clear from these evidences of internal disruptiveness that science, as a whole, does not at the present moment possess that cohesiveness and unity of aim which are vital to a period of demiurgic spiritual effort.

XXIV. On the evidence of internal disintegration one would infer that science has either passed, or has not yet reached, its constructive synthetic era. But are there not signs around us which point to a coming and then incipient period, in which science will develop its doctrine of human life as a great spiritual power? The clearest notes in this scientific chord which is be- ginning to sound are perhaps the geographical and the biological ones.

We have seen how the geographer, no longer merely in- terpreting the present by the aid of the past, is beginning to have visions of the future. In seeing the city as the realization of regional potencies, he cannot but feel also an ideal impulse toward organizing the city as an optimum adaptation of the