Scientifi c Methods 321seemed too abstract to provide even metaphorical guidance in everyday life.
As early as 1906, a columnist in The Nation lamented the greater complex-
ity and specialization of scientifi c knowledge. “One may say,” the author
observed, “not that the average cultivated man has given up on science,
but that science has given up on him.”^49 The perception that modern sci-
entifi c knowledge was receding from the world of ordinary experience be-
came more intense in light of the revelations of modern theoretical phys-
ics during the second quarter of century. A New York Times article noted the
possibility, with tongue fi rmly in cheek, of “electronic marriage morality”
or a “wave code for fathers and children.” The growing specialization of
science was bolstered by its movement into particular social locations, such
as industrial and government laboratories, institutions of higher learning,
and professional organizations. More and more, method rather than the
particular details of scientifi c knowledge captured what was accessible and
portable about such a science. In his 1932 address to journalists in Washing-
ton, D.C., physicist Robert Millikan asserted that the “main thing that the
popularization of science can contribute to the progress of the world con-
sists in the spreading of a knowledge of the method of science to the man in
the street” and showing how it could be used to solve the problems of life.^50
Howard Roelofs’s father was in perfect tune with Millikan’s sentiment.
At the same time, science was emerging as an increasingly powerful
notion in American culture. Practitioners found that their science had
new abilities to leverage an expanded variety of material resources from
new patrons, including philanthropic organizations and large corpora-
tions. After World War I, many scientists pushed to protect and to extend
the benefi ts of their participation in the war effort.^51 Science also became
a more signifi cant source of cognitive prestige both sought after and oc-
casionally resisted. In his memoirs of the 1920s, journalist Frederick Lewis
Allen claimed that “the prestige of science was colossal” and that “the
man in the street and the woman in the kitchen” were “ready to believe
that science could accomplish almost anything.”^52 There is good reason to
question the universality of Allen’s impression—his somewhat biased as-
sertions about the aftermath of the famous 1927 Scopes Trial have misled
subsequent generations of Americans—but it likely refl ected his own view
and that of the professionals and intellectuals with whom he worked and
socialized. The ability of science to sweep away examples of outmoded
thinking made it a particularly powerful agent of modernization. That
same power could also be threatening. By the early 1930s, in light of the
Great Depression and the presumed erosion of traditional values, some
members of the American intelligentsia questioned the uncritical celebra-
tion of the modern scientifi c and technological juggernaut.^53