Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 80.djvu/56

52 equally true is it that science never has existed, nor can it be conceived as existing wholly apart from the world of other interests. For instance, science simply could not be without objects of nature to operate on, and appliances such as instruments and chemicals and literature to work with. And more interesting still from the standpoint of method, verification and confirmation (almost always by more than one worker) are entirely essential to science. Science is as certainly communal as it is individual.

The communal functions of science on the material side are sufficiently recognized in what is known as modern civilization. The incalculable worth of "applied science," commonly so-called, for human life under this type of culture is questioned to only a negligible extent. There is no need of either exposition or apologetic on behalf of this aspect of science.

Not so with science in its relation to the higher, the spiritual, life of men. Looked at from this standpoint it is truly surprising that the value attached to science should be so largely that of physical utility. To be sure, there is a rather general recognition that science, or certain aspects of it, are valuable for mental discipline, especially of the powers of observation. It is allowed, too, that science has an important function in delivering men from superstition. Beyond this little is claimed for science as a contributor to the higher needs and life of humanity. All along the line, educators, publicists, clergymen, politicians, journalists and, surprisingly, scientific men themselves, appear to take it for granted that the office of science is primarily to minister to man's bodily needs, and secondarily to sharpen his wits. If anything beyond this comes from it, so current opinion holds, this is quite incidental and secondary.

My belief is that science must justify its right to live and flourish, not alone by its ministrations to physical well-being, but also to the higher and highest reaches of man's nature. While 1 do not for a moment subscribe to the view held by a few, that science is everything, that by and by it will supplant religion, philosophy, ethics, art and the rest, I am fully persuaded that as civilization advances it must become ever more and more an underpinning and ally of all these.

The distinction between an institution of applied science and one of pure science might be stated thus: The former is one the primary aim of which is to use certain more or less well-established truths and principles of science to the answering of man's needs and desires in certain well-defined directions. For example, the Bureau of Soils of the United States Department of Agriculture is for the purpose of applying chemistry, physics and geology to the end of increasing the productivity of the land of the United States. The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine is for the "perfection of physicians in tropical