Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1909 — Science the Great Instrument Of Social Change. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Science the Great Instrument Of Social Change.

By ARTHUR. J. BALFOUR.

British Statesman.

< »••••*•*«.* HE material world, howsoever it may have gained in ’I yfIMT •• sublimity, has, under the TOUCH OF SCIENCE, o <• lost in domestic charm. Except where it affects the ;; ’ immediate needs of organic life it may seem so remote j * J * from the concerns of men that in the majority it will < >**«»»»«*♦ rouse n 0 curiosity, while of those wRo are fascinated by its morals not a few will be chilled by its impersonal and indifferent immensity. The appropriate remedy is the perpetual stimulus which the influence of science on the business of mankind offers to their sluggish curiosity. And even now I believe this influence to be underrated. If in the last hundred years the WHOLE MATERIAL SETTING OF CIVILIZED LIFE HAS ALTERED we owe it neither to politicians nor to political institutions. We owe it to the COMBINED EFFORTS OF THOSE WHO HAVE ADVANCED SCIENCE AND THOSE WHO HAVE APPLIED IT. If our outlook upon the universe has suffered modifications in detail so great and so numerous that they amount collectively to a REVOLUTION it is to men of science we owe it, not to theologians or philosophers. On these, indeed, new and weighty responsibilities are being cast. They have to harmonize and to co-ordinate to prevent the new from being one sided, to preserve the valuable essence of what is old. BUT SCIENCE IS THE GREAT INSTRUMENT OF SOCIAL CHANGE, ALL THE GREATER BECAUSE ITS OBJECT IS NOT CHANGE, BUT KNOWLEDGE. AND ITS SILENT APPROPRIATION OF THIS DOMINANT FUNCTION AMID THE DIN OF POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS STRIFE IS THE MOST VITAL OF ALL THE REVOLUTIONS WHICH HAVE MARKED THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CIVILIZATION. It may seem fanciful to find in a single recent aspect of this revolution an influence which resembles religion or patriotism in its appeals to the higher side of ordinary characters, especially since we are accustomed to regard the appropriation by industry of scientific discoveries merely as a means of MULTIPLYING THE MATERIAL CONVENIENCES OF LIFE.

But if it be remembered that this process brings vast sections of every industrial community into ADMIRING RELATION WITH THE HIGHEST INTELLECTUAL ACHIEVEMENT and the most disinterested search for truth, that those who live by ministering to the common wants of average humanity lean for support on those who search among the deepest mysteries of nature, that their dependence is rewarded by growing success, that success gives in its turn an incentive to individual effort in nowise to be measured by personal expectation of gain, that the energies thus aroused MAY AFFECT THE WHOLE CHARACTER OF THE COMMUNITY, spreading the beneficent contagion of hope and high endeavor through channels scarcely known to. workers in fields the most remote —if all this be borne in mind it may perhaps seem not unworthy the place I have assigned to it. A SOCIAL FORCE HAS COME INTO BEING, NEW IN MAGNITUDE IF NOT IN KIND. THIS FORCE 18 THE MODERN ALLIANCE BETWEEN PURE SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.