In the collection of data a wide field must be covered, to be sure that we are dealing with invariable relations instead of with mere coincidences, "or overemphasizing the importance of one out of a number of coöperating causes." Tabulation of the data collected is very important, since classification of the data does much to suggest the causal relations sought. The headings under which data will be collected depend on the purposes of the investigation. In general, statistics can suggest generalizations, rather than establish them. They indicate probability, not invariable relation.[2]
[Footnote 2: See Jones: Logic, pp. 213-25, for a discussion of Probability.]
Science as an instrument of human progress. We have, in an earlier section of this chapter, referred to the practical value of science. "Man's power of deliberate control of his own affairs depends upon ability to direct energies to use; an ability which is, in turn, dependent upon insight into nature's processes. Whatever natural science may be for the specialist,... it is knowledge of the conditions of human action."[3] And the wider, the more complete and the more penetrating our knowledge of the world in which we live, the more extended become the boundaries of human action. Through a knowledge of natural processes, men have passed from a frightened subjection to Nature to its conscious control. And the fruits of that control are, as we have already had occasion to notice, all-pervading in practical life. That complete transformation of life known as the Industrial Revolution, which came about with such swiftness and completeness in the early nineteenth century, and whose effects have not yet ceased to accumulate, was the direct outcome of the application of the experimental science which had begun in the sixteenth. Some of the consequences of the application of theoretical investigation to practical life have already been noted. There are first the more obvious facts of the inventions, great and small—the railways, steamships, electric transportation, automobiles, and telephones—which have changed in countless details our daily life. There are the profound and all-pervasive changes which have been brought about in industrial and social relations: the building-up of our vast industrial centers, the change from small-scale handicrafts to large-scale machine production, the factory system, with its concomitants of immensely increased resources and immensely complicated problems of human life. Science in the short span of three centuries has shown how rapid and immediate could be the fruits of human control of Nature, and its further fruits are incalculable.
[Footnote 3: Dewey: Democracy and Education, p. 267.]
Science has indeed already begun to affect men's attitude towards experience as well as their material progress. It is only when men set out with the conscious realization that intelligence does make a difference in the world, that science becomes articulate. Science is the guarantee of progress. It has shown men that the future is to some extent in their own hands; that by dint of a laborious and detailed application of intelligence to the processes of nature, those processes can be controlled in the interests of human welfare.
Science has led men to look to the future instead of the past. The coincidence of the ideal of progress with the advance of science is not a mere coincidence. Before this advance men placed the golden age in remote antiquity. Now they face the future with a firm belief that intelligence properly used can do away with evils once thought inevitable. To subjugate devastating disease is no longer a dream; the hope of abolishing poverty is not Utopian.[1]
[Footnote 1: Dewey: Democracy and Education, pp. 262-63.]
But science may be used for any end. It reveals the relations of phenomena, relations which hold for all men. It shows what causes are connected with what consequents, and, as already pointed out, in the knowledge of causes lies the possible control of effects. We can secure the results we desire, by discovering what antecedents must first be established. Science is thus a fund of common resources. Specific causes are revealed to be connected with specific effects, and men, by making a choice of antecedents, can secure the consequences they desire. But which effects they will desire depends on the instincts, standards, and habits of the individual, and the traditions and ideals of the group. A knowledge of chemistry may be used for productive industrial processes, or in the invention of poison gas. Expert acquaintance with psychology and educational methods may be used to impress upon a nation an arbitrary type of life (an accusation justly brought against the Prussian educational system), or to promote the specific possibilities that each individual displays.
Not only are the fruits of scientific inquiry used in different ways by different individuals and groups, but scientific inquiry is itself affected by the prevailing interests and mode of life. What inquiries shall be furthered depends on what the individual or group feels it important to know. From a social point of view, certain scientific developments are of more urgency and imperativeness than others. During an emergency, as during the Great War, it might be necessary to turn all the energies of scientific men into immediately productive pursuits. And, since the pursuit of inquiry on a large scale demands large resources, those researches which give promise of beneficent human consequences will the more readily command social sanction and approval and will be developed at the expense of more remote speculations however intrinsically interesting these latter may be.
Science has proved so valuable a human instrument that it has attained a moral responsibility. Men have increasingly come to realize that the pressing problems of our industrial life require for their solution not the confusions and incompetences of passion and prejudice, but an application of the fruits of scientific inquiry. Science has already so completely demonstrated its vast fruitfulness in human welfare, that it must be watched with jealous vigilance. It must result as it began, in the improvement of human welfare.[1] But what constitutes human welfare is a question which leads us into the final activity of the Career of Reason, Morals and Moral Valuation, man's attempt to determine what happiness is, and how he may attain it.