have doubted the justice of speaking of a second scientific revolution in the twentieth century, alleging that in this case there was no break in continuity of research such as occurred between Classical times and the Renaissance, nor was there any notable slackening of the pace of advance. Now the terms revolution and continuity are inevitably relative. I have even been attacked by other critics for under-rating the continuity of Renaisssance and Medieval thought. But I feel that if we grant the term revolution in one case, we must grant it in the other. Against the revolution of the earth and the circulation of the blood, the telescope and the vacuum pump, and the upsetting of previous ideas that these implied, we may urge the discovery of the nuclear atom, relativity, and the quantum theory, as well as of the processes of bio-chemistry and the inner structure of the cell, the electron microscope, and the electronic computing machine. Add to that the sudden acceleration of all scientific activity and its application, from atom fission and television to the control of disease, and it would appear that if this is not a scientific revolution nothing is. Nevertheless, the contention that the two revolutions are not comparable may be true in another sense. The first revolution actually discovered the method of science, the second only applied it. The new revolutionary character of the twentieth century cannot be confined to science, it resides even more in the fact that only in our time has science come to dominate industry and agriculture. The revolution might perhaps more justly be called the first scientific-technical revolution …