International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1 / Philosophy and Metaphysics

by Unknown

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 invention of printing with movable type. Gutenberg was born during the first decade of the century, and his associates and others credited with the invention not many years afterward. If we accept the principle on which I am basing my argument, that we should assign the first place to the birth of those psychic agencies which started men on new lines of thought, then surely was the fifteenth the wonderful century.

Let us not forget that, in assigning the actors then born to their places, we are not narrating history, but studying a special phase of evolution. It matters not for us that no university invited Leonardo to its halls, and that his science was valued by his contemporaries only as an adjunct to the art of engineering. The great fact still is that he was the first of mankind to propound laws of motion. It is not for anything in Luther's doctrines that he finds a place in our scheme. No matter for us whether they were sound or not. What he did toward the evolution of the scientific investigator was to show by his example that a man might question the best-established and most venerable authority and still live—still preserve his intellectual integrity—still command a hearing from nations and their rulers. It matters not for us whether Columbus ever knew that he had discovered a new continent. His work was to teach that neither hydra, chimera, nor abyss—neither divine injunction nor infernal machination—was in the way of men visiting every part of the globe, and that the problem of conquering the world reduced itself to one of sails and rigging, hull and compass. The better part of Copernicus was to direct man to a viewpoint whence he should see that the heavens were of like matter with the earth. All this done, the acorn was planted from which the oak of our civilization should spring. The mad quest for gold which followed the discovery of Columbus, the questionings which absorbed the attention of the learned, the indignation excited by the seeming vagaries of a Paracelsus, the fear and trembling lest the strange doctrine of Copernicus should undermine the faith of centuries, were all helps to the germination of the seed—stimuli to thought which urged it on to explore the new fields opened up to its occupation. This given, all that has since followed came out in regular order of development, and need be here considered only in those phases having a special relation to the purpose of our present meeting.

So slow was the growth at first that the sixteenth century may scarcely have recognized the inauguration of a new era. Torricelli and Benedetti were of the third generation after Leonardo, and Galileo, the first to make a substantial advance upon his theory, was born more than a century after him. Only two or three men appeared in a generation who, working alone, could make real progress in discovery, and even these could do little in leavening the minds of their fellow men with the new ideas.

Up to the middle of the seventeenth century an agent which all experience since that time shows to be necessary to the most productive intellectual activity was wanting. This was the attraction of like minds, making suggestions to each other, criticising, comparing, and reasoning. This element was introduced by the organization of the Royal Society of London and the Academy of Sciences of Paris.