Essays on the use and limit of the imagination in science

JOHN TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S.
LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1870.
To a Second Edition of a Discourse on the Scientific Use of the Imagination, delivered before the British Association at Liverpool on September 16, 1870, are here added an Address on the Limit of the Imagination in Science, delivered before the Mathematical and Physical Section of the Association at Norwich on August 19, 1868, and a short Essay, entitled ‘Earlier Thoughts.’
The Address and the Essay were meant to be brief, but definite statements of the relation of Life and Consciousness to Matter and Force.
As in the case of the recent Discourse, opinion was divided with regard to the objects and merits of the Norwich Address. On the one hand, two eminent clergymen, one of the Church of England, the other a Dissenter, proposed and seconded respectively a vote of thanks, which was liberally carried by the section; on the other hand, I was publicly warned that, as a consequence of my impiety, the bolts of heaven were in a state of potential suspension above my head, ready to descend if further drawn upon.
My main object, both at Norwich and at Liverpool, was, firstly, to dissipate the repugnance, and indeed terror, which in many minds are associated with the thought that science has abolished the mystery of man’s relation to the universe; and, secondly, to remove the hindrance which popular notions regarding the origin of life oppose to legitimate scientific speculation.
ATHENÆUM CLUB: November 1870.
From the TIMES, Sept. 19, 1870.
THE GLORY of a Natural Philosopher appears to depend less on the power of his imagination to explore minute recesses or immeasurable space than on the skill and patience with which, by observation and experiment, he assures us of the certainty of these invisible operations. Newton’s glory is founded, not on the sudden imagination by which he leapt ‘from a falling apple to a falling moon,’ but on that astonishing tenacity of investigation by which he reduced his guesses to moral certainties, and enabled us to witness a practical verification of his laws in every almanack we use. When the movements of the heavenly bodies have been discovered by this laborious process, the imagination is excellently employed in picturing to the mind’s eye what transcends the physical vision; and, perhaps, the labour of the investigation itself would be unendurable unless the attention could be relieved by the constant pictorial aid afforded by the imagination....