【分析解答题】

How can science be encouraged to flourish and grow How can the results of science be used to the best purpose for the benefit of humanity 71. It was to find the answers to these question% which are not merely academic but practical ones, that this whole inquiry into the place of science in society was undertaken. It can be justified only in so far as it helps to find them.

The way to answer the first question is to find the best conditions, external and internal, which have in the past helped the progress of science and to anticipate the changed needs of the present and future. The answer to the second question, which depends on the first, is set out towards the end of this chapter. Some of the external conditions for the flourishing of science in the past have already been discusseD、72. In essence they are provided only in periods of social and economic advance, when science is given social importance and material means and is continually stimulated to new activity by problems presented to it from the economic and social spheres.
73. Now these problems have been essentially, as we have seen, those that touched the interests of the ruling class of the time, whether real, like navigation, or imaginary, like astrology. The opportunity and the honor given to the practitioners of science at any time are a measure of the degree to which they serve at these interests. They are greatest in periods of active advance, because then the people who are occupied with science are closely in touch with the main economic interests, and are often drawn from the directing classes themselves or are brought into their counsels because of their abilities. We have had many examples in these pages such as:Archimedes, Grosseteste, Leonardo, Galileo,Boyle,Davy, Pasteur, Kelvin.