There was a time when the
inventor and the engineer were romantic half-starved outsiders,
treated as cranks. The business man and the artisan knew all the
mysteries of their craft. Then the mysteries grew more mysterious, and
at last industry began to depend upon physical laws and chemical
combinations that no eye could see, and only a trained mind could
conceive. The scientist moved from his noble garret in the Latin
Quarter into office buildings and laboratories. For he alone could
construct a working image of the reality on which industry rested.
From the new relationship he took as much as he gave, perhaps more:
pure science developed faster than applied, though it drew its
economic support, a great deal of its inspiration, and even more of
its relevancy, from constant contact with practical decision. But
physical science still labored under the enormous limitation that the
men who made decisions had only their commonsense to guide them. They
administered without scientific aid a world complicated by scientists.
Again they had to deal with facts they could not apprehend, and as
once they had to call in engineers, they now have to call in
statisticians, accountants, experts of all sorts.
These practical students are the true pioneers of a new social
science. They are "in mesh with the driving wheels" [Footnote: Cf. The
Address of the President of the American Philosophical Association,
Mr.
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