Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Civics: as Applied Sociology by Patrick Geddes
page 51 of 142 (35%)
antique porter but the primitive sentinel.

I may seem unduly to labour such points, yet do so advisedly, in order
to emphasise and make clearer the essential thesis of this portion of my
paper--that every scientific survey involves a geographic and historic
exploration of origins, but that of the still unwritten chapter, that
the far-reaching forelook, idealistic yet also critical, which is
needful to any true and enduring contribution to social service, is
prepared for by habitually imaging the course of evolution in the past.

Speaking personally, as one whose leisure and practical life have alike
been largely spent in the study and the preservation of ancient
buildings, I may say that this has not been solely, or even essentially,
from an antiquarian interest in the historic past, but still more on
behalf of a practical interest--that of the idealistic, yet economic,
utilitarian, because educational and evolutionary, transformation of our
old cities--old Edinburgh, old Dunfermline, and the like--from their
present sordid unhygienic failure; and therefore industrial and
commercial insufficiency, towards a future equalling if not transcending
the recorded greatness of the civic past.

It has, therefore, been to lay the broadest possible basis of
evolutionary science, of geographic and historic fact, for what would
otherwise be open to ridicule as a Utopian hope, that of Civics as
Applied Social Art, that I have insisted at such length above upon
Civics as Applied Social Science.




DigitalOcean Referral Badge