Discoverers not Inventors.
Although Galileo only discovered the moons of Jupiter, we often and unconsciously think of him as if he had been their creator, and had first set them to play their untiring game of hide-and-seek round the stately planet; and so also in no irreverent spirit we call the laws which Kepler divined to regulate certain movements of the heavenly bodies, “Kepler’s Laws,” although he disclaimed the title, grandly affirming that God, whose laws they were, had waited some thousand years before one man, even Kepler, had discerned them. And so again, notwithstanding our conviction that the star Neptune has been shining in the sky since what we shall be content to call “the beginning,” and that all the tiny planets which have so rapidly been added to our astronomical catalogues are probably as old as the sun, we cannot help feeling as if Adams, Leverrier, Hind, and their brethren, had just planted those lights in the sky, and that midnight should be sensibly less dark because of their addition to the heavens.
When we work as transformationalists we are like sculptors, not evolving a pre-existent statue from a concealing mass, but bestowing a statue on a block of marble. The hollow screw is Archimedes’ screw; the condensing steam-engine, Watt’s engine; the railway locomotive, Stephenson’s locomotive; the electric telegraph, Oersted’s telegraph; the Crystal Palace, Fox and Paxton’s palace. Yet as implied in what has been already said, we treat discoverers as if they were inventors, and to make amends we call inventors discoverers. And although, in strictness of speech, it is inadmissible to speak of Watt, as accomplished men are frequently found doing, as the discoverer of the steam-engine, and only Sancho Panza thought of invoking blessings on the man who first invented sleep, still the popular confusion between the discoverer and the inventor shows how difficult it is to assign the one higher praise than the other.—Prof. George Wilson.
Science of Roger Bacon.
Roger Bacon, writing about the year 1260, that is, six hundred years ago, says:—“I call that Experimental Science which neglects argumentation; for the strongest arguments prove nothing as long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science does not receive truth at the hands of superior sciences. It is itself mistress, and other sciences are its servants. It has, in truth, the right to command all sciences, since it alone certifies and sanctions their results. Experimental science is, therefore, the queen of sciences and the limit of all speculation.” The features in Bacon’s writings that have caused his name to be handed down as a founder of physical science are very obvious. He doubts wisely and has a profound reverence for facts. The theory of a vacuum has come to him on the highest authority, but its difficulties distress him. He speaks of experimental philosophy as more perfect than all the natural sciences; “for it teaches us to test by trial the noble conclusions of all the sciences, which, in the others, are either proved by logical arguments or are examined into on the imperfect evidence of nature; and this is its prerogative.”
“As a workman in the laboratory, and with lenses, he himself discovers the existence of explosive compounds, confirms the tradition of history as to the effect of burning glasses, and understands the principle of the camera. He points out the faultiness of Cæsar’s calendar. His views of the limits of medicine are excellent. ‘For, whereas a healthy rule of life depends upon what is eaten and drank, on the hours of sleep and waking, of exercise and rest, on climate and the temper of the mind, and that all these should be observed from childhood in the constitution they fit, scarcely any man cares to take thought of these things, nay, not even physicians, such at least as we have met with.’ Contrast this and his critical approval of the use of charms to delude credulous patients into health with the science ridiculed in the Malade Imaginaire, and the advantage will not be found on the side of the seventeenth century. But, even in physical science, Bacon’s splendid powers of generalization prevail over the habit of analysis, and he is rather a prophet than a teacher. He believes that the period of human life may be prolonged many years by a sound system of dietetics; and the averages of life in our own century confirm him. He believes that ‘engines of navigation may be made without oarsmen, so that the greatest river and sea-ships with only one man to steer them, may sail swifter than if they were fully manned. Moreover, chariots,’ he thinks, ‘may be made so as to be moved with incalculable force without any beast drawing them.’ ‘And such things might be made to infinity, as, for instance, bridges to traverse rivers without pillars or any buttress.’ He even knows a wise man who has determined to construct a flying machine; but Bacon’s tone on this subject is a little less confident. That he himself hoped for much that has since been proved impossible—for the art of increasing gold, and for the discovery of an elixir of life—cannot of course be questioned. Bacon summed up the science of his times, and the analogies which guided him in his estimate of the laws of motion could not teach him to anticipate by five hundred years the individuality of the elements, or to understand the texture of the human body. His error, after all, was chiefly that he believed in Thought as a conqueror, and expected to establish her kingdom on the ruins of the thrones of the visible world.”—Saturday Review.
The One Science.
In an able summary in the Times of the contents of Sir Henry Holland’s Essays on Scientific and other Subjects, we find the following suggestive passages:—“The sciences are so interlacing and coalescing that it would seem as if in a year or two we should only have one huge science embracing all; or, at least, what are now regarded as separate sciences should be considerably reduced in number. This is more or less implied in the controversy on the “Correlation of Forces.” The question is,—Are there really “Forces” in nature? Or should we not rather say that there is but one force appearing under different forms? Among these forces may be mentioned light. The undulatory theory of the transmission of light is as old as Huyghens, but its universal acceptance is an incident of our own day; and it is in our own day that radiant heat has been discovered to be subject to those great physical laws which are the basis of the undulatory theory. Here, then, we find in our time, within the last few years, that the three great sciences of optics, of acoustics, and of heat, reduce their principal facts to the same formula. Or again, take this science of optics in another relation. It has within the last few years proved itself to be the most delicate instrument of chemistry. By the aid of a little starch the chemist can detect the millionth part of iodine in solution. Mr. Faraday has found that a strong ruby tint is given to a fluid by a proportion of gold not exceeding the half-millionth part in weight. These are wonderful results of ordinary chemical analysis; but what are they in comparison with the results obtained through the analysis of the spectrum? By means of it chymists have been able to detect in a compound 1-70,000,000th part of a grain of lithium, and the 1-180,000,000th part of a grain of sodium, the metal of common salt. The method of the analysis is very simple. If a little sodium, for instance, be burnt in a flame, and during the process of this burning the rays be made to pass through a prism, then in a certain defined portion of the spectrum beyond there will appear a thin yellow line, so vivid that it will show even when the sodium has been reduced to the 1-180,000,000th part of a grain. By help of the same analysis we pass on to astronomy, and discover the chemistry of the sun, the moon, and the stars. In the photosphere, or luminous atmosphere surrounding the body of the sun, there has in this way been discovered no less than six known metals.