Foresight Instead of Hindsight.
While inventors in the past might have taken many a hint from nature, as a matter of fact they seldom did so, but went ahead, hit-or-miss, failing to observe that what they reached with much laborious fumbling, often they might have copied directly from nature. In Colorado and California we admire the dams which are convex upstream, withstanding in all the strength of an arch a tremendous pressure: this very plan is adopted by beavers when they build in a swift current, as one may see in many streams of the Adirondacks. In the rearing of irrigation dams, in tasks much more difficult, human progress has gone forward by empirical attempts one after another, and science has followed, long afterward, to give reasons for any success arrived at by rule-of-thumb. But this blundering hindsight is being replaced by a foresight which first spies out what may be hit, and then never wastes an arrow. Professor R. H. Thurston has said:—“Bleaching and dyeing flourished before chemistry had a name; the inventor of gunpowder lived before Lavoisier; the mariner’s compass pointed the seaman to the pole before magnetism took form as a science. The steam engine was invented and set at work, substantially as we know it to-day, before the science of thermodynamics was dreamt of; the telegraph and the telephone, the electric light and the railroad have made us familiar with marvels greater than those of fiction, and yet they have been principally developed, in every instance, by men who had acquired less of scientific knowledge than we demand to-day of every college-bred lad.”
To-day the leaders in applied science are of quite other stamp. They keenly observe what nature does, either in spontaneous chemical activities or in the functions of a plant or an animal, then analyzing the process with more and more insight and accuracy, they ask, How may this with economy and profit be imitated by art? A feat of Professor Henri Moissan is typical in this regard. In studying diamonds he became convinced that they have been produced in nature from ordinary carbon subjected to extreme temperatures and pressures. Imitating these heats and pressures as well as he could, he manufactured diamonds from common graphite in an electrical furnace. These gems are small, but they gleam with promise of what the fully armed physicist and chemist may achieve in duplicating the gifts of nature in the light of new knowledge, by dint of new resources.
CHAPTER XIX
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Knowledge as sought by disinterested inquirers . . . A plenteous harvest with but few reapers . . . Germany leads in original research . . . The Carnegie Institution at Washington.
We have now taken a rapid survey of invention and discovery in the fields of Form, Size, Properties, Measurement, and the Teachings of Nature. We will here somewhat change our point of view and bestow a glance at the characteristics of inventors and discoverers, noting their powers of observation and experiment, their patience from first to last in learning from other thinkers and workers past and present. What any one man, however able, can discover or invent, is the merest trifle in comparison with the resources accumulated since the dawn of human wit. And yet in adding a little to what he has learned, that little welds and vivifies his education as nothing else can. In setting out to add to known truth there must be a goodly equipment in knowledge and skill. Knowledge, therefore, may serve as a starting point for the survey before us.
Knowledge Necessary.
Success in discovery and invention, as in the case of a Newton or a Watt, depends not only upon rare natural faculty, but upon knowledge. Dr. Pye-Smith, of London, an eminent physician, says:—“Some would have us believe that erudition is a clog upon genius. This question has often been discussed, and it has even been maintained that he is most likely to search out the secrets of nature who comes fresh to the task with faculties unexhausted by prolonged reading, and his judgment uninfluenced by the discoveries of others. This, however, is surely a delusion. Harvey could not have discovered the circulation of the blood had he not been taught all that had been previously learned of anatomy. True, no progress can be made by the mere assimilation of previous knowledge. There must be an intelligent curiosity, an observant eye, and intellectual insight. Few things are more deplorable than to see talent and industry employed in fruitless researches, partly rediscovering what is already fully known, or stubbornly toiling along a road which has long ago been found to lead no whither. We must then instruct our students to the utmost of our power. Whether they will add to knowledge we cannot tell, but at least they shall not hinder its growth by their ignorance. The strong intellect will absorb and digest all that we put before it, and will be all the better fitted for independent research. The less powerful will at least be kept from false discoveries and will form, what genius itself requires, a competent and appreciative audience.”