which has been most potent in applying these branches of science to wield the energies of nature and direct them to the service of man has been that of the engineer. Without the engineer how little of all this activity could there have been; and without mathematics, mechanics, physics and chemistry, where were the engineer?
If looking over this England of Edward the Seventh we try to put ourselves back into the England of Edward the Sixth—or for that matter of any pre-Victorian monarch—we must admit that the differences to be found in the social and industrial conditions around us are due not in any appreciable degree to any changes in politics, philosophy, religion, or law, but to science and its applications. If we look abroad, and contrast the Germany of Wilhelm the Second with the Germany of Charles the Fifth, we shall come to the like conclusion. So also in Italy, in Switzerland, in every one indeed of the progressive nations. And it is precisely in the stagnant nations, such as Spain, or Servia, where the cultivation of science has scarcely begun, that the social conditions remain in the backward state of the middle ages.
Interaction of Abstract Science and its Applications
In engineering, above all other branches of human effort, we are able to trace the close interaction between abstract science and its practical applications. Often as the connection between pure science and its applications has been emphasized in addresses upon engineering, the emphasis has almost always been laid upon the influence of the abstract upon the concrete. We are all familiar with the doctrine that the progress of science ought to be an end in itself, that scientific research ought to be pursued without regard to its immediate applications, that the importance of a discovery must not be measured by its apparent utility at the moment. We are assured that research in pure science is bound to work itself out in due time into technical applications of utility, and that the pioneer ought not to pause in his quest to work out potential industrial developments. We are invited to consider the example of the immortal Faraday, who deliberately abstained from busying himself with marketable inventions arising out of his discoveries, excusing himself on the ground that he had no time to spare for money-making. It is equally true, and equally to the point, that Faraday, when he had established a new fact or a new physical relation, ceased from busying himself with it and pronounced that it was now ready to be handed over to the mathematicians. But, admitting all these commonplaces as to the value of abstract science in itself and for its own sake, admitting also the proposition that sooner or later the practical applications are bound to follow on upon the discovery, it yet remains true that in this thing the temperament of the discoverer
