The material sciences early show the bias of the machine technology, as is fairly to be expected, since these sciences stand in a peculiarly close relation to the technological side of industry,--almost a relation of affiliation. At no earlier period has the correlation between science and technology been so close. And the response in respect of the scope and method of these sciences to any notable advance in technology has been sufficiently striking. As has already been indicated above, modern science at large takes to the use of statistical methods and precise mechanical measurements, and in this matter scientific inquiry has grown continually more confident and more meticulous at the same time that this mechanistic procedure is continually being applied more extensively as the technological advance goes forward. How far this statistical-mechanistic bias of modern inquiry is to be set down to the account of the drift of technology toward mechanical engineering, and how far it may be due to an ever increasing familiarity with conceptions of accountancy enforced by the price system and the time schedule in daily life, may be left an open question. The main fact remains, that in much the same degree as niceties of calculation have come to dominate current technological methods and devices the like insistence on extreme niceties of mechanical measurement and statistical accuracy has also become imperative in scientific inquiry; until it may fairly be said that such meticulous scrutiny of quantitative relations as would have seemed foolish in the early days of the machine era has become the chief characteristic of scientific inquiry today.[146] It is of course not overlooked that in this matter of quantitative scruple the relation between current technology and the sciences is a relation of mutual give and take; but this fact can scarcely be urged as an objection to the view that these two lines of expression of the modern habit of mind are closely bound together, since it is precisely such a bond of continuity between the two that is here spoken for.