Laurence Sterne - "A Sentimental Journey"

Talbot Mundy - "The Eye of Zeitoon"

Thomas H. Huxley - "The Perpetuation of Living Beings"

William Makepeace Thackeray - "The Yellowplush Papers"

Side Lights On Astronomy

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XVI

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR

[Footnote: Presidential address at the opening of the
International Congress of Arts and Science, St. Louis Exposition,
September 21: 1904.]


As we look at the assemblage gathered in this hall, comprising so
many names of widest renown in every branch of learning--we might
almost say in every field of human endeavor--the first inquiry
suggested must be after the object of our meeting. The answer is
that our purpose corresponds to the eminence of the assemblage. We
aim at nothing less than a survey of the realm of knowledge, as
comprehensive as is permitted by the limitations of time and
space. The organizers of our congress have honored me with the
charge of presenting such preliminary view of its field as may
make clear the spirit of our undertaking.

Certain tendencies characteristic of the science of our day
clearly suggest the direction of our thoughts most appropriate to
the occasion. Among the strongest of these is one towards laying
greater stress on questions of the beginnings of things, and
regarding a knowledge of the laws of development of any object of
study as necessary to the understanding of its present form. It
may be conceded that the principle here involved is as applicable
in the broad field before us as in a special research into the
properties of the minutest organism. It therefore seems meet that
we should begin by inquiring what agency has brought about the
remarkable development of science to which the world of to-day
bears witness. This view is recognized in the plan of our
proceedings by providing for each great department of knowledge a
review of its progress during the century that has elapsed since
the great event commemorated by the scenes outside this hall. But
such reviews do not make up that general survey of science at
large which is necessary to the development of our theme, and
which must include the action of causes that had their origin long
before our time. The movement which culminated in making the
nineteenth century ever memorable in history is the outcome of a
long series of causes, acting through many centuries, which are
worthy of especial attention on such an occasion as this. In
setting them forth we should avoid laying stress on those visible
manifestations which, striking the eye of every beholder, are in
no danger of being overlooked, and search rather for those
agencies whose activities underlie the whole visible scene, but
which are liable to be blotted out of sight by the very brilliancy
of the results to which they have given rise. It is easy to draw
attention to the wonderful qualities of the oak; but, from that
very fact, it may be needful to point out that the real wonder
lies concealed in the acorn from which it grew.

Our inquiry into the logical order of the causes which have made
our civilization what it is to-day will be facilitated by bringing
to mind certain elementary considerations--ideas so familiar that
setting them forth may seem like citing a body of truisms--and yet
so frequently overlooked, not only individually, but in their
relation to each other, that the conclusion to which they lead may
be lost to sight. One of these propositions is that psychical
rather than material causes are those which we should regard as
fundamental in directing the development of the social organism.
The human intellect is the really active agent in every branch of
endeavor--the primum mobile of civilization--and all those
material manifestations to which our attention is so often
directed are to be regarded as secondary to this first agency. If
it be true that "in the world is nothing great but man; in man is
nothing great but mind," then should the key-note of our discourse
be the recognition of this first and greatest of powers.

Another well-known fact is that those applications of the forces
of nature to the promotion of human welfare which have made our
age what it is are of such comparatively recent origin that we
need go back only a single century to antedate their most
important features, and scarcely more than four centuries to find
their beginning. It follows that the subject of our inquiry should
be the commencement, not many centuries ago, of a certain new form
of intellectual activity.

Having gained this point of view, our next inquiry will be into
the nature of that activity and its relation to the stages of
progress which preceded and followed its beginning. The
superficial observer, who sees the oak but forgets the acorn,
might tell us that the special qualities which have brought out
such great results are expert scientific knowledge and rare
ingenuity, directed to the application of the powers of steam and
electricity. From this point of view the great inventors and the
great captains of industry were the first agents in bringing about
the modern era. But the more careful inquirer will see that the
work of these men was possible only through a knowledge of the
laws of nature, which had been gained by men whose work took
precedence of theirs in logical order, and that success in
invention has been measured by completeness in such knowledge.
While giving all due honor to the great inventors, let us remember
that the first place is that of the great investigators, whose
forceful intellects opened the way to secrets previously hidden
from men. Let it be an honor and not a reproach to these men that
they were not actuated by the love of gain, and did not keep
utilitarian ends in view in the pursuit of their researches. If it
seems that in neglecting such ends they were leaving undone the
most important part of their work, let us remember that Nature
turns a forbidding face to those who pay her court with the hope
of gain, and is responsive only to those suitors whose love for
her is pure and undefiled. Not only is the special genius required
in the investigator not that generally best adapted to applying
the discoveries which he makes, but the result of his having
sordid ends in view would be to narrow the field of his efforts,
and exercise a depressing effect upon his activities. The true man
of science has no such expression in his vocabulary as "useful
knowledge." His domain is as wide as nature itself, and he best
fulfils his mission when he leaves to others the task of applying
the knowledge he gives to the world.

We have here the explanation of the well-known fact that the
functions of the investigator of the laws of nature, and of the
inventor who applies these laws to utilitarian purposes, are
rarely united in the same person. If the one conspicuous exception
which the past century presents to this rule is not unique, we
should probably have to go back to Watt to find another.

From this view-point it is clear that the primary agent in the
movement which has elevated man to the masterful position he now
occupies is the scientific investigator. He it is whose work has
deprived plague and pestilence of their terrors, alleviated human
suffering, girdled the earth with the electric wire, bound the
continent with the iron way, and made neighbors of the most
distant nations. As the first agent which has made possible this
meeting of his representatives, let his evolution be this day our
worthy theme. As we follow the evolution of an organism by
studying the stages of its growth, so we have to show how the work
of the scientific investigator is related to the ineffectual
efforts of his predecessors.

In our time we think of the process of development in nature as
one going continuously forward through the combination of the
opposite processes of evolution and dissolution. The tendency of
our thought has been in the direction of banishing cataclysms to
the theological limbo, and viewing Nature as a sleepless plodder,
endowed with infinite patience, waiting through long ages for
results. I do not contest the truth of the principle of continuity
on which this view is based. But it fails to make known to us the
whole truth. The building of a ship from the time that her keel is
laid until she is making her way across the ocean is a slow and
gradual process; yet there is a cataclysmic epoch opening up a new
era in her history. It is the moment when, after lying for months
or years a dead, inert, immovable mass, she is suddenly endowed
with the power of motion, and, as if imbued with life, glides into
the stream, eager to begin the career for which she was designed.

I think it is thus in the development of humanity. Long ages may
pass during which a race, to all external observation, appears to
be making no real progress. Additions may be made to learning, and
the records of history may constantly grow, but there is nothing
in its sphere of thought, or in the features of its life, that can
be called essentially new. Yet, Nature may have been all along
slowly working in a way which evades our scrutiny, until the
result of her operations suddenly appears in a new and
revolutionary movement, carrying the race to a higher plane of
civilization.

It is not difficult to point out such epochs in human progress.
The greatest of all, because it was the first, is one of which we
find no record either in written or geological history. It was the
epoch when our progenitors first took conscious thought of the
morrow, first used the crude weapons which Nature had placed
within their reach to kill their prey, first built a fire to warm
their bodies and cook their food. I love to fancy that there was
some one first man, the Adam of evolution, who did all this, and
who used the power thus acquired to show his fellows how they
might profit by his example. When the members of the tribe or
community which he gathered around him began to conceive of life
as a whole--to include yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow in the
same mental grasp--to think how they might apply the gifts of
Nature to their own uses--a movement was begun which should
ultimately lead to civilization.

Long indeed must have been the ages required for the development
of this rudest primitive community into the civilization revealed
to us by the most ancient tablets of Egypt and Assyria. After
spoken language was developed, and after the rude representation
of ideas by visible marks drawn to resemble them had long been
practised, some Cadmus must have invented an alphabet. When the
use of written language was thus introduced, the word of command
ceased to be confined to the range of the human voice, and it
became possible for master minds to extend their influence as far
as a written message could be carried. Then were communities
gathered into provinces; provinces into kingdoms, kingdoms into
great empires of antiquity. Then arose a stage of civilization
which we find pictured in the most ancient records--a stage in
which men were governed by laws that were perhaps as wisely
adapted to their conditions as our laws are to ours--in which the
phenomena of nature were rudely observed, and striking occurrences
in the earth or in the heavens recorded in the annals of the
nation.

Vast was the progress of knowledge during the interval between
these empires and the century in which modern science began. Yet,
if I am right in making a distinction between the slow and regular
steps of progress, each growing naturally out of that which
preceded it, and the entrance of the mind at some fairly definite
epoch into an entirely new sphere of activity, it would appear
that there was only one such epoch during the entire interval.
This was when abstract geometrical reasoning commenced, and
astronomical observations aiming at precision were recorded,
compared, and discussed. Closely associated with it must have been
the construction of the forms of logic. The radical difference
between the demonstration of a theorem of geometry and the
reasoning of every-day life which the masses of men must have
practised from the beginning, and which few even to-day ever get
beyond, is so evident at a glance that I need not dwell upon it.
The principal feature of this advance is that, by one of those
antinomies of human intellect of which examples are not wanting
even in our own time, the development of abstract ideas preceded
the concrete knowledge of natural phenomena. When we reflect that
in the geometry of Euclid the science of space was brought to such
logical perfection that even to-day its teachers are not agreed as
to the practicability of any great improvement upon it, we cannot
avoid the feeling that a very slight change in the direction of
the intellectual activity of the Greeks would have led to the
beginning of natural science. But it would seem that the very
purity and perfection which was aimed at in their system of
geometry stood in the way of any extension or application of its
methods and spirit to the field of nature. One example of this is
worthy of attention. In modern teaching the idea of magnitude as
generated by motion is freely introduced. A line is described by a
moving point; a plane by a moving line; a solid by a moving plane.
It may, at first sight, seem singular that this conception finds
no place in the Euclidian system. But we may regard the omission
as a mark of logical purity and rigor. Had the real or supposed
advantages of introducing motion into geometrical conceptions been
suggested to Euclid, we may suppose him to have replied that the
theorems of space are independent of time; that the idea of motion
necessarily implies time, and that, in consequence, to avail
ourselves of it would be to introduce an extraneous element into
geometry.

It is quite possible that the contempt of the ancient philosophers
for the practical application of their science, which has
continued in some form to our own time, and which is not
altogether unwholesome, was a powerful factor in the same
direction. The result was that, in keeping geometry pure from
ideas which did not belong to it, it failed to form what might
otherwise have been the basis of physical science. Its founders
missed the discovery that methods similar to those of geometric
demonstration could be extended into other and wider fields than
that of space. Thus not only the development of applied geometry
but the reduction of other conceptions to a rigorous mathematical
form was indefinitely postponed.

There is, however, one science which admitted of the immediate
application of the theorems of geometry, and which did not require
the application of the experimental method. Astronomy is
necessarily a science of observation pure and simple, in which
experiment can have no place except as an auxiliary. The vague
accounts of striking celestial phenomena handed down by the
priests and astrologers of antiquity were followed in the time of
the Greeks by observations having, in form at least, a rude
approach to precision, though nothing like the degree of precision
that the astronomer of to-day would reach with the naked eye,
aided by such instruments as he could fashion from the tools at
the command of the ancients.

The rude observations commenced by the Babylonians were continued
with gradually improving instruments--first by the Greeks and
afterwards by the Arabs--but the results failed to afford any
insight into the true relation of the earth to the heavens. What
was most remarkable in this failure is that, to take a first step
forward which would have led on to success, no more was necessary
than a course of abstract thinking vastly easier than that
required for working out the problems of geometry. That space is
infinite is an unexpressed axiom, tacitly assumed by Euclid and
his successors. Combining this with the most elementary
consideration of the properties of the triangle, it would be seen
that a body of any given size could be placed at such a distance
in space as to appear to us like a point. Hence a body as large as
our earth, which was known to be a globe from the time that the
ancient Phoenicians navigated the Mediterranean, if placed in the
heavens at a sufficient distance, would look like a star. The
obvious conclusion that the stars might be bodies like our globe,
shining either by their own light or by that of the sun, would
have been a first step to the understanding of the true system of
the world.

There is historic evidence that this deduction did not wholly
escape the Greek thinkers. It is true that the critical student
will assign little weight to the current belief that the vague
theory of Pythagoras--that fire was at the centre of all things--
implies a conception of the heliocentric theory of the solar
system. But the testimony of Archimedes, confused though it is in
form, leaves no serious doubt that Aristarchus of Samos not only
propounded the view that the earth revolves both on its own axis
and around the sun, but that he correctly removed the great
stumbling-block in the way of this theory by adding that the
distance of the fixed stars was infinitely greater than the
dimensions of the earth's orbit. Even the world of philosophy was
not yet ready for this conception, and, so far from seeing the
reasonableness of the explanation, we find Ptolemy arguing against
the rotation of the earth on grounds which careful observations of
the phenomena around him would have shown to be ill-founded.

Physical science, if we can apply that term to an uncoordinated
body of facts, was successfully cultivated from the earliest
times. Something must have been known of the properties of metals,
and the art of extracting them from their ores must have been
practised, from the time that coins and medals were first stamped.
The properties of the most common compounds were discovered by
alchemists in their vain search for the philosopher's stone, but
no actual progress worthy of the name rewarded the practitioners
of the black art.

Perhaps the first approach to a correct method was that of
Archimedes, who by much thinking worked out the law of the lever,
reached the conception of the centre of gravity, and demonstrated
the first principles of hydrostatics. It is remarkable that he did
not extend his researches into the phenomena of motion, whether
spontaneous or produced by force. The stationary condition of the
human intellect is most strikingly illustrated by the fact that
not until the time of Leonardo was any substantial advance made on
his discovery. To sum up in one sentence the most characteristic
feature of ancient and medieval science, we see a notable contrast
between the precision of thought implied in the construction and
demonstration of geometrical theorems and the vague indefinite
character of the ideas of natural phenomena generally, a contrast
which did not disappear until the foundations of modern science
began to be laid.

We should miss the most essential point of the difference between
medieval and modern learning if we looked upon it as mainly a
difference either in the precision or the amount of knowledge. The
development of both of these qualities would, under any
circumstances, have been slow and gradual, but sure. We can hardly
suppose that any one generation, or even any one century, would
have seen the complete substitution of exact for inexact ideas.
Slowness of growth is as inevitable in the case of knowledge as in
that of a growing organism. The most essential point of difference
is one of those seemingly slight ones, the importance of which we
are too apt to overlook. It was like the drop of blood in the
wrong place, which some one has told us makes all the difference
between a philosopher and a maniac. It was all the difference
between a living tree and a dead one, between an inert mass and a
growing organism. The transition of knowledge from the dead to the
living form must, in any complete review of the subject, be looked
upon as the really great event of modern times. Before this event
the intellect was bound down by a scholasticism which regarded
knowledge as a rounded whole, the parts of which were written in
books and carried in the minds of learned men. The student was
taught from the beginning of his work to look upon authority as
the foundation of his beliefs. The older the authority the greater
the weight it carried. So effective was this teaching that it
seems never to have occurred to individual men that they had all
the opportunities ever enjoyed by Aristotle of discovering truth,
with the added advantage of all his knowledge to begin with.
Advanced as was the development of formal logic, that practical
logic was wanting which could see that the last of a series of
authorities, every one of which rested on those which preceded it,
could never form a surer foundation for any doctrine than that
supplied by its original propounder.

The result of this view of knowledge was that, although during the
fifteen centuries following the death of the geometer of Syracuse
great universities were founded at which generations of professors
expounded all the learning of their time, neither professor nor
student ever suspected what latent possibilities of good were
concealed in the most familiar operations of Nature. Every one
felt the wind blow, saw water boil, and heard the thunder crash,
but never thought of investigating the forces here at play. Up to
the middle of the fifteenth century the most acute observer could
scarcely have seen the dawn of a new era.

In view of this state of things it must be regarded as one of the
most remarkable facts in evolutionary history that four or five
men, whose mental constitution was either typical of the new order
of things, or who were powerful agents in bringing it about, were
all born during the fifteenth century, four of them at least, at
so nearly the same time as to be contemporaries.

Leonardo da Vinci, whose artistic genius has charmed succeeding
generations, was also the first practical engineer of his time,
and the first man after Archimedes to make a substantial advance
in developing the laws of motion. That the world was not prepared
to make use of his scientific discoveries does not detract from
the significance which must attach to the period of his birth.

Shortly after him was born the great navigator whose bold spirit
was to make known a new world, thus giving to commercial
enterprise that impetus which was so powerful an agent in bringing
about a revolution in the thoughts of men.

The birth of Columbus was soon followed by that of Copernicus, the
first after Aristarchus to demonstrate the true system of the
world. In him more than in any of his contemporaries do we see the
struggle between the old forms of thought and the new. It seems
almost pathetic and is certainly most suggestive of the general
view of knowledge taken at that time that, instead of claiming
credit for bringing to light great truths before unknown, he made
a labored attempt to show that, after all, there was nothing
really new in his system, which he claimed to date from Pythagoras
and Philolaus. In this connection it is curious that he makes no
mention of Aristarchus, who I think will be regarded by
conservative historians as his only demonstrated predecessor. To
the hold of the older ideas upon his mind we must attribute the
fact that in constructing his system he took great pains to make
as little change as possible in ancient conceptions.

Luther, the greatest thought-stirrer of them all, practically of
the same generation with Copernicus, Leonardo and Columbus, does
not come in as a scientific investigator, but as the great
loosener of chains which had so fettered the intellect of men that
they dared not think otherwise than as the authorities thought.

Almost coeval with the advent of these intellects was the

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