A century of science in America

by Unknown

To the Romans, science owes little beyond what is implied in their vast architectural monuments, buildings and aqueducts which were erected at home and in the countries of their conquests. The elder Pliny (23–79 A. D.) most nearly deserved to be called a man of science, but his work on natural history, comprised in thirty-seven volumes, is hardly more than a compilation of fable, fact, and fancy, and is sometimes termed a collection of anecdotes. He lost his life in the “grandest geological event of antiquity,” the eruption of Vesuvius, which is vividly described by his nephew, the younger Pliny, in “one of the most remarkable literary productions in the domain of geology” (Zittel).

With the fall of Rome and the decline of Roman civilization came a period of intellectual darkness, from which the world did not emerge until the revival of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Then the extension of geographical knowledge went hand in hand with the development of art, literature, and the birth of a new science. Copernicus (1473–1543) gave the world at last a sun-controlled solar system; Kepler (1571–1630) formulated the laws governing the motion of the planets; Galileo (1564–1642) with his telescope opened up new vistas of astronomical knowledge and laid the foundations of mechanics; while Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, musician and true scientist, studied the laws of falling bodies and solved the riddle of the fossils in the rocks. Still later Newton (1642–1727) established the law of gravitation, developed the calculus, put mechanics upon a solid basis and also worked out the properties of lenses and prisms so that his Optics (1704) will always have a prominent place in the history of science.

From the time of the Renaissance on science grew steadily, but it was not till the latter half of the eighteenth century that the foundations in most of the lines recognized to-day were fully laid. Much of what was accomplished then is, at least, outlined in the chapters following.

Our standpoint in the early years of the nineteenth century, just before the American Journal had its beginning, may be briefly summarized as follows: A desire for knowledge was almost universal and, therefore, also a general interest in the development of science. Mathematics was firmly established and the mathematical side of astronomy and natural philosophy—as physics was then called—was well developed. Many of the phenomena of heat and their applications, as in the steam engine of Watt, were known and even the true nature of heat had been almost established by our countryman, Count Rumford; but of electricity there were only a few sparks of knowledge. Chemistry had had its foundation firmly laid by Priestley, Lavoisier, and Dalton, while Berzelius was pushing rapidly forward. Geology had also its roots down, chiefly through the work of Hutton and William Smith, though the earth was as yet essentially an unexplored field. Systematic zoology and botany had been firmly grounded by Buffon, Lamarck and Cuvier, on the one hand, and Linnæus on the other; but of all that is embraced under the biology of the latter half of the nineteenth century the world knew nothing. The statements of Silliman in his Introductory Remarks in the first number, quoted in part on a following page, put the matter still more fully, but they are influenced by the enthusiasm of the time and he could have had little comprehension of what was to be the record of the next one hundred years.

Now, leaving this hasty and incomplete retrospect and coming down to 1918, we find the contrast between to-day and 1818 perhaps most strikingly brought out, on the material side, if we consider the ability of man, in the early part of the nineteenth century, to meet the demands upon him in the matter of transportation of himself and his property. In 1800, he had hardly advanced beyond his ancestor of the earliest civilization; on the contrary, he was still dependent for transportation on land upon the muscular efforts of himself and domesticated animals, while at sea he had only the use of sails in addition. The first application of the steam engine with commercial success was made by Fulton when, in 1807, the steamboat “Clermont” made its famous trip on the Hudson River. Since then, step by step, transportation has been made more and more rapid, economical and convenient, both on land and water. This has come first through the perfection of the steam engine; later through the agency of electricity, and still further and more universally by the use of gasolene motors. Finally, in these early years of the twentieth century, what seemed once a wild dream of the imagination has been realized, and man has gained the conquest of the air; while the perfection of the submarine is as wonderful as its work can be deadly.

Hardly less marvelous is the practical annihilation of space and time in the electric transmission of human thought and speech by wire and by ether waves. While, still further, the same electrical current now gives man his artificial illumination and serves him in a thousand ways besides.

But the limitations of space have also been conquered, during the same period, by the spectroscope which brings a knowledge of the material nature of the sun and the fixed stars and of their motion in the line of sight; while spectrum analysis has revealed the existence of many new elements and opened up vistas as to the nature of matter.

The chemist and the physicist, often working together in the investigation of the problems lying between their two departments, have accumulated a staggering array of new facts from which the principles of their sciences have been deduced. Many new elements have been discovered, in fact nearly all called for by the periodic law; the so-called fixed gases have been liquefied, and now air in liquid form is almost a plaything; the absolute zero has been nearly reached in the boiling point of helium; physical measurements in great precision have been carried out in both directions for temperatures far beyond any scale that was early conceived possible; the atom, once supposed to be indivisible, has been shown to be made up of the much smaller electrons, while its disintegration in radium and its derivatives has been traced out and with consequences only as yet partly understood but certainly having far-reaching consequences; at one point we seem to be brought near to the transmutation of the elements which was so long the dream of the alchemist. Still again photography has been discovered and perfected and with the use of X-rays it gives a picture of the structure of bodies totally opaque to the eye; the same X-rays seem likely to locate and determine the atoms in the crystal.

Here and at many other points we are reaching out to a knowledge of the ultimate nature of matter.

In geology, vast progress has been made in the knowledge of the earth, not only as to its features now exhibited at or near the surface, but also as to its history in past ages, of the development of its structure, the minute history of its life, the phenomena of its earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. Geological surveys in all civilized countries have been carried to a high degree of perfection.