History of the inductive sciences, from the earliest to the present time

by William Whewell

Such speculations are not confined to the world of inert matter; we have examples of them in inquiries concerning the monuments of the art and labor of distant ages; in examinations into the origin and early progress of states and cities, customs and languages; as well as in researches concerning the causes and formations of mountains and rocks, the imbedding of fossils in strata, and their elevation from the bottom of the ocean. All these speculations are connected by this bond,—that they endeavor to ascend to a past state of things, by the aid of the evidence of the present. In asserting, with Cuvier, that [500] “The geologist is an antiquary of a new order,” we do not mark a fanciful and superficial resemblance of employment merely, but a real and philosophical connexion of the principles of investigation. The organic fossils which occur in the rock, and the medals which we find in the ruins of ancient cities, are to be studied in a similar spirit and for a similar purpose. Indeed, it is not always easy to know where the task of the geologist ends, and that of the antiquary begins. The study of ancient geography may involve us in the examination of the causes by which the forms of coasts and plains are changed; the ancient mound or scarped rock may force upon us the problem, whether its form is the work of nature or of man; the ruined temple may exhibit the traces of time in its changed level, and sea-worn columns; and thus the antiquarian of the earth may be brought into the very middle of the domain belonging to the antiquarian of art.

Such a union of these different kinds of archæological investigations has, in fact, repeatedly occurred. The changes which have taken place in the temple of Jupiter Serapis, near Puzzuoli, are of the sort which have just been described; and this is only one example of a large class of objects;—the monuments of art converted into records of natural events. And on a wider scale, we find Cuvier, in his inquiries into geological changes, bringing together historical and physical evidence. Dr. Prichard, in his Researches into the Physical History of Man, has shown that to execute such a design as his, we must combine the knowledge of the physiological laws of nature with the traditions of history and the philosophical comparison of languages. And even if we refuse to admit, as part of the business of geology, inquiries concerning the origin and physical history of the present population of the globe; still the geologist is compelled to take an interest in such inquiries, in order to understand matters which rigorously belong to his proper domain; for the ascertained history of the present state of things offers the best means of throwing light upon the causes of past changes. Mr. Lyell quotes Dr. Prichard’s book more frequently than any geological work of the same extent.

Again, we may notice another common circumstance in the studies which we are grouping together as palætiological, diverse as they are in their subjects. In all of them we have the same kind of manifestations of a number of successive changes, each springing out of a preceding state; and in all, the phenomena at each step become more and more complicated, by involving the results of all that has preceded, modified by supervening agencies. The general aspect of all these [501] trains of change is similar, and offers the same features for description. The relics and ruins of the earlier states are preserved, mutilated and dead, in the products of later times. The analogical figures by which we are tempted to express this relation are philosophically true. It is more than a mere fanciful description, to say that in languages, customs, forms of Society, political institutions, we see a number of formations super-imposed upon one another, each of which is, for the most part, an assemblage of fragments and results of the preceding condition. Though our comparison might be bold, it would be just, if we were to assert, that the English language is a conglomerate of Latin words, bound together in a Saxon cement; the fragments of the Latin being partly portions introduced directly from the parent quarry, with all their sharp edges, and partly pebbles of the same material, obscured and shaped by long rolling in a Norman or some other channel. Thus the study of palætiology in the materials of the earth, is only a type of similar studies with respect to all the elements, which, in the history of the earth’s inhabitants, have been constantly undergoing a series of connected changes.

But, wide as is the view which such considerations give us of the class of sciences to which geology belongs, they extend still further. “The science of the changes which have taken place in the organic kingdoms of nature,” (such is the description which has been given of Geology,[3]) may, by following another set of connexions, be extended beyond “the modifications of the surface of our own planet.” For we cannot doubt that some resemblance of a closer or looser kind, has obtained between the changes and causes of change, on other bodies of the universe, and on our own. The appearances of something of the kind of volcanic action on the surface of the moon, are not to be mistaken. And the inquiries concerning the origin of our planet and of our solar system, inquiries to which Geology irresistibly impels her students, direct us to ask what information the rest of the universe can supply, bearing upon this subject. It has been thought by some, that we can trace systems, more or less like our solar system, in the process of formation; the nebulous matter, which is at first expansive and attenuated, condensing gradually into suns and planets. Whether this Nebular Hypothesis be tenable or not, I shall not here inquire; but the discussion of such a question would be closely connected with [502] geology, both in its interests and in its methods. If men are ever able to frame a science of the past changes by which the universe has been brought into its present condition, this science will be properly described as Cosmical Palætiology.

[3] Lyell, Principles of Geology, p. 1.

These palætiological sciences might properly be called historical, if that term were sufficiently precise: for they are all of the nature of history, being concerned with the succession of events: and the part of history which deals with the past causes of events, is, in fact, a moral palætiology. But the phrase Natural History has so accustomed us to a use of the word history in which we have nothing to do with time, that, if we were to employ the word historical to describe the palætiological sciences, it would be in constant danger of being misunderstood. The fact is, as Mohs has said, that Natural History, when systematically treated, rigorously excludes all that is historical; for it classes objects by their permanent and universal properties, and has nothing to do with the narration of particular and casual facts. And this is an inconsistency which we shall not attempt to rectify.

All palætiological sciences, since they undertake to refer changes to their causes, assume a certain classification of the phenomena which change brings forth, and a knowledge of the operation of the causes of change. These phenomena, these causes, are very different, in the branches of knowledge which I have thus classed together. The natural features of the earth’s surface, the works of art, the institutions of society, the forms of language, taken together, are undoubtedly a very wide collection of subjects of speculation; and the kinds of causation which apply to them are no less varied. Of the causes of change in the inorganic and organic world,—the peculiar principles of Geology—we shall hereafter have to speak. As these must be studied by the geologist, so, in like manner, the tendencies, instincts, faculties, principles, which direct man to architecture and sculpture, to civil government, to rational and grammatical speech, and which have determined the circumstances of his progress in these paths, must be in a great degree known to the Palætiologist of Art, of Society, and of Language, respectively, in order that he may speculate soundly upon his peculiar subject. With these matters we shall not here meddle, confining ourselves, in our exemplification of the conditions and progress of such sciences, to the case of Geology.

The journey of survey which we have attempted to perform over the field of human knowledge, although carefully directed according to the paths and divisions of the physical sciences, has already [503] conducted us to the boundaries of physical science, and gives us a glimpse of the region beyond. In following the history of Life, we found ourselves led to notice the perceptive and active faculties of man; it appeared that there was a ready passage from physiology to psychology, from physics to metaphysics. In the class of sciences now under notice, we are, at a different point, carried from the world of matter to the world of thought and feeling,—from things to men. For, as we have already said, the science of the causes of change includes the productions of Man as well as of Nature. The history of the earth, and the history of the earth’s inhabitants, as collected from phenomena, are governed by the same principles. Thus the portions of knowledge which seek to travel back towards the origin, whether of inert things or of the works of man, resemble each other. Both of them treat of events as connected by the thread of time and causation. In both we endeavor to learn accurately what the present is, and hence what the past has been. Both are historical sciences in the same sense.

It must be recollected that I am now speaking of history as ætiological;—as it investigates causes, and as it does this in a scientific, that is, in a rigorous and systematic, manner. And I may observe here, though I cannot now dwell on the subject, that all ætiological sciences will consist of three portions; the Description of the facts and phenomena;—the general Theory of the causes of change appropriate to the case;—and the Application of the theory to the facts. Thus, taking Geology for our example, we must have, first Descriptive or Phenomenal Geology; next, the exposition of the general principles by which such phenomena can be produced, which we may term Geological Dynamics; and, lastly, doctrines hence derived, as to what have been the causes of the existing state of things, which we may call Physical Geology.

These three branches of geology may be found frequently or constantly combined in the works of writers on the subject, and it may not always be easy to discriminate exactly what belongs to each subject.[4] But the analogy of this science with others, its present [504] condition and future fortunes, will derive great illustration from such a distribution of its history; and in this point of view, therefore, we shall briefly treat of it; dividing the history of Geological Dynamics, for the sake of convenience, into two Chapters, one referring to inorganic, and one to organic, phenomena.