第9章 世論に対する力(世論に対する影響力) n.4 - 白人の支配権が失われ始め・・
こういった世論に対する影響は,単に事実に訴えることを通して、科学によって成就されてきた(注:東宮氏は "All this effect on opinion" を「意見に及ぼす,このような影響も・・・」と訳しているが,ここでの "opinion" は単なる個々人の意見に対する影響ではなく「世論」に対する影響と考えて訳すべきであろう。もちろん,世論は個々人の意見の一般的集約ではあるが・・・。)。一般理論として科学が言うことは,疑問に付すことができるものであるが,技術としての科学の結果は誰にとっても明らかである。科学は白人に世界の支配権を与え(たが),日本人が科学技術を獲得した以降にのみ(以降に初めて),白人の支配権は失われ始めている(のである)。 |
Chapter IX: Power Over Opinion, n.4It is customary now-a-days to decry Reason as a force in human affairs, yet the rise of science is an overwhelming argument on the other side. The men of science proved to intelligent laymen that a certain kind of intellectual outlook ministers to military prowess and to wealth; these ends were so ardently desired that the new intellectual outlook overcame that of the Middle Ages, in spite of the force of tradition and the revenues of the Church and the sentiments associated with Catholic theology. The world ceased to believe that Joshua caused the sun to stand still, because Copernican astronomy was useful in navigation ; it abandoned Aristotle's physics, because Galileo's theory of falling bodies made it possible to calculate the trajectory of a cannon-ball ; it rejected the story of the flood, because geology is useful in mining; and so on. It is now generally recognized that science is indispensable both in war and in peace-time industry, and that, without science, a nation can be neither rich nor powerful.All this effect on opinion has been achieved by science merely through appeal to fact : what science had to say in the way of general theories might be questionable, but its results in the way of technique were patent to all. Science gave the white man the mastery of the world, which he has begun to lose only since the Japanese acquired his technique. |