CIVILIZATION AUD THE MACHINE PROCESS 369
cal processes, so that from that time the progress of inventions has been of a cumulative character and has cumulatively heightened the diaciplinary force of the machine process. This early technological advance, of course, took place in the British community, where the machine process first gained headway and where the discipline of a prevalent machine industry inculcated thinking in terms of the machine process.
So also it was in the British community that modern science fell into the lines marked out by technological thinking and began to formulate its theories in terms of process rather than in terms of prime causes and the like. While something of this kind ie noticeable relatively early in some of the inorganic sciences, as, e.g., Geology, the striking and decisive move in this direction was taken toward the middle of the century by Darwin and his contemporaries.' Without much preliminary exposition and without feeling himself to be out of touch with his contemporaries, Darwin set to work to explain species in terms of the process out of which they have arisen, rather than out of the prime cause to which the distinction between them may be due.* Denying nothing as to the substantial services of the
1 Darwin, of course, does not stand alone. He is the great exponent of a vast movement which involves a shifting of the point of view and of the point of interest in scientific research and speculation.
■ This la UiB aubataaoe of Darwio'a advance over Lamuck, tor inalance.
370 THE THEORY OF BCSINE3S ENTEBPRiaB
Gran Artífice en el desarrollo de las especies, simple e ingenuamente lo dejó fuera del esquema porque, al tratarse de un factor personal, no podía formularse ni manejarse en términos de proceso.