Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of DiscussionsSpencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
Further analysis would show that the many arts thus concerned in the
economical production of a child's frock, have each of them been brought to
its present efficiency by slow steps which the other arts have aided; and
that from the beginning this reciprocity has been ever on the increase. It
needs but on the one hand to consider how utterly impossible it is for the
savage, even with ore and coal ready, to produce so simple a thing as an
iron hatchet; and then to consider, on the other hand, that it would have
been impracticable among ourselves, even a century ago, to raise the tubes
of the Britannia bridge from lack of the hydraulic press; to at once see
how mutually dependent are the arts, and how all must advance that each may
advance. Well, the sciences are involved with each other in just the same
manner. They are, in fact, inextricably woven into this same complex web of
the arts; and are only conventionally independent of it. Originally the two
were one. How to fix the religious festivals; when to sow; how to weigh
commodities; and in what manner to measure ground; were the purely
practical questions out of which arose astronomy, mechanics, geometry.
Since then there has been a perpetual inosculation of the sciences and the
arts. Science has been supplying art with truer generalizations and more
completely quantitative previsions. Art has been supplying science with
better materials, and more perfect instruments. And all along the
interdependence has been growing closer, not only between art and science,
but among the arts themselves, and among the sciences themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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