 Section 1 of the Advance of Science This is a LibriVox recording while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Advance of Science in the Last Half Century by T. H. Huxley, 1889 The most obvious and the most distinctive features of the history of civilization during the last 50 years is the wonderful increase of industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement of old technical processes, and the invention of new ones, accompanied by an even more remarkable development of old and new means of locomotion and intercommunication. By this rapid and vast multiplication of the commodities and conveniences of existence, the general standard of comfort has been raised, the ravages of pestilence and famine have been checked, and the natural obstacles which time and space offered to mutual intercourse have been reduced in a manner and to an extent unknown to former ages. The diminution or removal of local ignorance and prejudice, the creation of common interests among the most widely separated peoples, and the strengthening of the forces of the organization of the Commonwealth against those of political or social anarchy, thus affected, have exerted an influence on the present and future fortunes of mankind, the full significance of which may be defined but cannot as yet be estimated at its full value. This revolution, for it is nothing less in the political and social aspects of modern civilization, has been preceded, accompanied, and in great measure caused by a less obvious but no less marvelous increase of natural knowledge, and especially of that part of it which is known as physical science, in consequence of the application of scientific method to the investigation of the phenomena of the material world. Not that the growth of physical science is an exclusive prerogative of the Victorian age, its present strength and volume merely indicate the highest level of a stream which took its rise alongside of the primal fonts of philosophy, literature, and art in ancient Greece, and after being dammed up for a thousand years, once more began to flow three centuries ago. It may be doubted if even hinted justice as free from fulsome pentadryric as from capsious depreciation has ever yet been dealt out to the sages of antiquity who, for eight centuries, from the time of tales to that of gallon, toiled at the foundations of physical science. But without entering into the discussion of that large question, it is certain that the labors of these early workers in the field of natural knowledge were brought to a standstill by the decay and disruption of the Roman Empire, the consequent disorganization of society, and the diversion...