Science, in the sense of an articulate recognition of causal
sequence in phenomena, whether physical or social, has been a
feature of the Western culture only since the industrial process
in the Western communities has come to be substantially a process
of mechanical contrivances in which man's office is that of
discrimination and valuation of material forces. Science has
flourished somewhat in the same degree as the industrial life of
the community has conformed to this pattern, and somewhat in the
same degree as the industrial interest has dominated the
community's life. And science, and scientific theory especially,
has made headway in the several departments of human life and
knowledge in proportion as each of these several departments has
successively come into closer contact with the industrial process
and the economic interest; or perhaps it is truer to say, in
proportion as each of them has successively escaped from the
dominance of the conceptions of personal relation or status, and
of the derivative canons of anthropomorphic fitness and honorific
worth.
It is only as the exigencies of modern industrial life have
enforced the recognition of causal sequence in the practical
contact of mankind with their environment, that men have come to
systematize the phenomena of this environment and the facts of
their own contact with it,in terms of causal sequence.
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