Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/528

524 branches of the educational institutions is proceeding at a geometric rate.

In the strictly scientific aspect, the governmental work pertaining to knowledge and control of the natural elements enters or occupies the fields of astronomy, meteorology (including climatology), geology (including mineralogy and paleontology), biology (including phytology or botany, zoology, entomology, ornithology, ichthyology, etc.), ecology, chemistry and physics—i.e., a large part of the concrete or objective sciences; and it involves applications of all the abstract or subjective sciences, and touches on that series of human sciences with which the others are in a sense paired. In the strictly practical aspect, the work is directed specifically to the earth as affected by air and water and sun in relation to life and growth, including that of men and nations, along lines laid down in the organization of the bureaus and departments; and there is little tendency to follow the lines or occupy the fields of the conventional sciences.

The developments of the last three decades indicate an unforeseen trend: While the subjective sciences are continuing their steady advance as bases of definite knowledge, they are of lessening prominence; the objective sciences are advancing much more rapidly both as applications of the primary sciences and as branches of definite knowledge in themselves; yet the most rapid advance of all is in applications of the objective sciences (with their subjective foundation) to special lines or fields in strict accordance with the established methods and principles. So the sum of definite knowledge is subdivided into ever-multiplying specialties, while the applications become essentially scientific in themselves; observation matures in experimentation, and both purposes and the objects themselves are progressively modified in ways which gradually become utilitarian, i.e., directly tributary to the power and prosperity of men and nations. Meantime the specialties rise to a new plane; in philosophic view (following the suggestions of Sir William Hamilton and Lester F. Ward) they become conative or—more abstractly—telic, and reflect that ever-springing desire for betterment expressed by invention; in practical view by the light of current progress they become directive, in that the specialist not merely investigates but gradually brings under control and redirects the natural development of the phenomena with which he deals. Now this modern trend is too definite and too consistent to escape thoughtful observers, and has indeed been widely recognized; it may justly be regarded as an expression of inherent tendency and a mark of natural if not inevitable movement. It by no means necessarily indicates a scientific decline, as some apprehend, but rather a normal readjustment of the human mind to the external factors of human existence and welfare; in fact, it but renders progressive and purposive that