HUXLEY’s OPPONENTS: (1) THE BUSINESS MEN
The full significance of “Science and Culture” appears only when it is placed in its historical setting. To-day Huxley’s views seem commonplace, because to-day everyone accepts them. Who, nowadays, disputes his proposition that the sciences are an essential element of modern culture? And who denies that “the diffusion of a thorough scientific education is an absolutely essential condition of industrial progress”?
In England in 1880, however, these ideas seemed shockingly radical to a very large majority of the people who were doing the thinking of the country and managing its affairs; and the advocates of scientific studies faced a powerful opposing party composed of two groups—the practical men of business, and the men of liberal education.
Scientific education was despised by practical business men because it seemed not only unnecessary, but actually harmful as a preparation for business. English industries had flourished amazingly without the aid of the sciences, and the captains of industry saw no reason to believe that “rule of thumb,” by which they had succeeded, would not continue to suffice for their needs. They failed to see the importance of the connection between scientific education and the industries; but it was even then perceived in Germany, that “land of damned professors,” with the result that Germany rose, in the next twenty-five years, from industrial insignificance to the position of England’s leading industrial competitor.
A further result was a general outcry in England for the kind of training which Huxley advocated.