en'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
mo