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nydus/A Short History of the WorldPublic
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Table of Contents

LVII THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE

MODEL OF ARKWRIGHT’S SPINNING JENNY, 1769
MODEL OF ARKWRIGHT’S SPINNING JENNY, 1769 From the specifications in the Patent Office

The universities of Britain were at this time in a state of educational retrogression, largely given over to a pedantic conning of the Latin and Greek classics. French education, too, was dominated by the classical tradition of the Jesuit schools, and consequently it was not difficult for the Germans to organize a body of investigators, small indeed in relation to the possibilities of the case, but large in proportion to the little band of British and French inventors and experimentalists. And though this work of research and experiment was making Britain and France the most rich and powerful countries in the world, it was not making scientific and inventive men rich and powerful. There is a necessary unworldliness about a sincere scientific man; he is too preoccupied with

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