ABSTRACT
The sciences which are in any peculiar sense modern take as a postulate the fact of consecutive change. In so far as the science is of a modern complexion, in so far as it is not of the nature of taxonomy simply, the inquiry converges upon a matter of process; and it comes to rest, provisionally, when it has disposed of its facts in terms of process. To the pre-Darwinian taxonomists the center of interest and attention, to which all scientific inquiry must legitimately converge, was the body of natural laws governing phenomena under the rule of causation. The new technological departure, which made its first great epoch in the so-called industrial revolution, in the technological ascendancy of the machine-process, brought a new and characteristic discipline into the cultural situation. Industrial life and usage came to intrude creatively into the cultural scheme on the one hand and into the scheme of authentic knowledge on the other hand.
