METEORIC ASTRONOMY.
The number of the Quarterly Journal of Science for May, 1872, contains some articles of considerable interest. The first is by the indefatigable Mr. Proctor, on “Meteoric Astronomy,” in which he embodies a clear and popular summary of the researches which have earned for Signor Schiaparelli this year’s gold medal of the Astronomical Society. Like all who venture upon a broad, bold effort of scientific thought, extending at all into the regions of philosophical theory, Schiaparelli has had to wait for recognition. A simple and merely mechanical observation of a bare fact, barely and mechanically recorded without the exercise of any other of the intellectual faculties than the external senses and observing powers, is at once received and duly honored by the scientific world; but any higher effort is received at first indifferently, or sceptically, and is only accepted after a period of probation, directly proportionate to its philosophical magnitude and importance, and inversely proportionate to the scientific status of the daring theorist.
At first sight this appears unjust, it looks like honoring the laborers who merely make the bricks, and despising the architect who constructs the edifice of philosophy from the materials they provide. Many a disappointed dreamer, finding that his theory of the universe has not been accepted, and that the expected honors have not been showered upon him, has violently attacked the whole scientific community as a contemptible gang of low-minded mechanical plodders, void of imagination, blind to all poetic aspirations, and incapable of any grand and comprehensive flight of intellect.
Had these impulsive gentlemen been previously subjected to the strict discipline of inductive scientific training, their position and opinions would have been very different. Their great theories would either have had no existence, or have been much smaller, and they would understand that philosophic caution is one of the characteristic results of scientific training.
Simple facts, which can be immediately proved by simple experiments and simple observations, are at once accepted, and their discoverers duly honored, without any hesitation or delay, but the grander efforts of generalization require careful thought and laborious scrutiny for their verification, and therefore the acknowledgment of their merits is necessarily delayed; but when it does arrive full justice is usually done.
Thus Grove’s “Correlation of the Physical Forces,” the greatest philosophical work on purely physical science of this generation, was commenced in 1842, when its author occupied but a humble position at the London Institution. The book was but little noticed for many years, and, had Mr. Grove (now Sir William Grove) not been duly educated by the discipline above referred to, he might have become a noisy cantankerous martyr, one of those “ill-used men” who have been made familiar to so many audiences by Mr. George Dawson.
Instead of this, he patiently waited, and, as we have lately seen, the well-deserved honors have now been liberally awarded.
In a very few years hence we shall be able to say the same of the once diabolical Darwin, and eight or nine other theorists, who must all be content to take their trial and patiently await the verdict; the time of waiting being of necessity proportionate to the magnitude of the issue.
The theories of Schiaparelli, which, as Mr. Proctor says, “after the usual term of doubt have so recently received the sanction of the highest astronomical tribunal of Great Britain,” are not of so purely speculative a character as to demand a very long “term of doubt.” They are directly based on observations and mathematical calculations which bring them under the domain of the recognized logic of mathematical probability. Those who are specially interested in the modern progress of astronomy should read this article in the Quarterly Journal of Science, which is illustrated with the diagrams necessary for the comprehension of the researches and reasoning of Schiaparelli and others who have worked on the same ground.