Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/50

46 methods are secondary. To say that science leads to, or suggests, some general 'interpretation' of things, is to say what may or may not be true; but the saying, in either case, transcends science itself and changes the man of science into the philosopher. It must, indeed, be acknowledged that science, despite the immensity of its scope and the multitudinous variety of its subject-matter, confines its followers within relatively narrow limits; the shadow of the three adjectives is always upon them; and it is just because science is thus narrower than life that the man of science, unless he be of a certain temperament, is tempted to transgress the limits, and to betake himself in the long run to philosophy—or to spiritism.

Over against science, now, stands what we have called technology. In a certain restricted meaning, this term—which we have so far employed without comment—is familiar enough; the greatly extended meaning which it is here to receive must be justified by the sequel. The word is used henceforth to cover, in the broadest way, the activities that are ordinarily and misleadingly referred to as "applied science"; such things, that is to say, as engineering and medicine, in all their branches; such things as scientific agriculture, and domestic science, and school hygiene, and industrial chemistry, and eugenics. All these disciplines have a common character, by which they are set off from science; for, if science is defined by its point of view, technology (in the new and wider sense) is defined by its end or goal. Technology thus has its own narrowness; it is held down to the pursuit of some particular practical end; but this narrowness is different from the limitation of science. The technologist may change his point of view as often as he likes; he will use any method that promises to be serviceable; he will attack any problem that rises in his path. The result is that a "system" of technology is likely to appear to the man of science a mixed medley of more or less unrelated knowledge, and that a pure science is likely to appear to the technologist an example of fine-spun and quite needless consistency. A text-book of engineering will range from sections on pure mathematics and pure mechanics to practical directions for the setting-up of instruments and the reading of indicator cards; and a system of medicine, in the same way, will skip from theory to practise and from practise back again to theory within the boundaries of a single paragraph.