Essays On Education And Kindred Subjects (Fiscle Part- 11) - Herbert Spencer (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) 📗
- Author: Herbert Spencer
Book online «Essays On Education And Kindred Subjects (Fiscle Part- 11) - Herbert Spencer (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) 📗». Author Herbert Spencer
Axis And For Precession Of The Equinoxes, But For Aberration And For
Refraction; And The Formation Of The Tables By Which Refraction Is
Calculated, Presupposes Knowledge Of The Law Of Decreasing Density In
The Upper Atmospheric Strata; Of The Law Of Decreasing Temperature, And
The Influence Of This On The Density; And Of Hygrometric Laws As Also
Affecting Density. So That, To Get Materials For Further Advance,
Astronomy Requires Not Only The Indirect Aid Of The Sciences Which Have
Presided Over The Making Of Its Improved Instruments, But The Direct Aid
Of An Advanced Optics, Of Barology, Of Thermology, Of Hygrometry; And If
We Remember That These Delicate Observations Are In Some Cases
Registered Electrically, And That They Are Further Corrected For The
"Personal Equation"--The Time Elapsing Between Seeing And Registering,
Which Varies With Different Observers--We May Even Add Electricity And
Psychology. If, Then, So Apparently Simple A Thing As Ascertaining The
Position Of A Star Is Complicated With So Many Phenomena, It Is Clear
That This Notion Of The Independence Of The Sciences, Or Certain Of
Them, Will Not Hold.
Whether Objectively Independent Or Not, They Cannot Be Subjectively
So--They Cannot Have Independence As Presented To Our Consciousness; And
This Is The Only Kind Of Independence With Which We Are Concerned. And
Here, Before Leaving These Illustrations, And Especially This Last One,
Let Us Not Omit To Notice How Clearly They Exhibit That Increasingly
Active _Consensus_ Of The Sciences Which Characterises Their Advancing
Development. Besides Finding That In These Later Times A Discovery In
One Science Commonly Causes Progress In Others; Besides Finding That A
Great Part Of The Questions With Which Modern Science Deals Are So Mixed
As To Require The Co-Operation Of Many Sciences For Their Solution; We
Find In This Last Case That, To Make A Single Good Observation In The
Purest Of The Natural Sciences, Requires The Combined Assistance Of Half
A Dozen Other Sciences.
Perhaps The Clearest Comprehension Of The Interconnected Growth Of The
Sciences May Be Obtained By Contemplating That Of The Arts, To Which It
Is Strictly Analogous, And With Which It Is Inseparably Bound Up. Most
Intelligent Persons Must Have Been, At One Time Or Other, Struck With
The Vast Array Of Antecedents Pre-Supposed By One Of Our Processes Of
Manufacture. Let Him Trace The Production Of A Printed Cotton, And
Consider All That Is Implied By It. There Are The Many Successive
Improvements Through Which The Power-Looms Reached Their Present
Perfection; There Is The Steam-Engine That Drives Them, Having Its Long
History From Papin Downwards; There Are The Lathes In Which Its Cylinder
Was Bored, And The String Of Ancestral Lathes From Which Those Lathes
Proceeded; There Is The Steam-Hammer Under Which Its Crank Shaft Was
Welded; There Are The Puddling-Furnaces, The Blast-Furnaces, The
Coal-Mines And The Iron-Mines Needful For Producing The Raw Material;
There Are The Slowly Improved Appliances By Which The Factory Was Built,
And Lighted, And Ventilated; There Are The Printing Engine, And The Die
House, And The Colour Laboratory With Its Stock Of Materials From All
Parts Of The World, Implying Cochineal-Culture, Logwood-Cutting,
Indigo-Growing; There Are The Implements Used By The Producers Of
Cotton, The Gins By Which It Is Cleaned, The Elaborate Machines By Which
It Is Spun: There Are The Vessels In Which Cotton Is Imported, With The
Building-Slips, The Rope-Yards, The Sail-Cloth Factories, The
Anchor-Forges, Needful For Making Them; And Besides All These Directly
Necessary Antecedents, Each Of Them Involving Many Others, There Are The
Institutions Which Have Developed The Requisite Intelligence, The
Printing And Publishing Arrangements Which Have Spread The Necessary
Information, The Social Organisation Which Has Rendered Possible Such A
Complex Co-Operation Of Agencies.
Further Analysis Would Show That The Many Arts Thus Concerned In The
Economical Production Of A Child's Frock, Have Each Of Them Been Brought
To Its Present Efficiency By Slow Steps Which The Other Arts Have Aided;
And That From The Beginning This Reciprocity Has Been Ever On The
Increase. It Needs But On The One Hand To Consider How Utterly
Impossible It Is For The Savage, Even With Ore And Coal Ready, To
Produce So Simple A Thing As An Iron Hatchet; And Then To Consider, On
The Other Hand, That It Would Have Been Impracticable Among Ourselves,
Even A Century Ago, To Raise The Tubes Of The Britannia Bridge From Lack
Of The Hydraulic Press; To At Once See How Mutually Dependent Are The
Arts, And How All Must Advance That Each May Advance. Well, The Sciences
Are Involved With Each Other In Just The Same Manner. They Are, In Fact,
Inextricably Woven Into The Same Complex Web Of The Arts; And Are Only
Conventionally Independent Of It. Originally The Two Were One. How To
Fix The Religious Festivals; When To Sow: How To Weigh Commodities; And
In What Manner To Measure Ground; Were The Purely Practical Questions
Out Of Which Arose Astronomy, Mechanics, Geometry. Since Then There Has
Been A Perpetual Inosculation Of The Sciences And The Arts. Science Has
Been Supplying Art With Truer Generalisations And More Completely
Quantitative Previsions. Art Has Been Supplying Science With Better
Materials And More Perfect Instruments. And All Along The
Interdependence Has Been Growing Closer, Not Only Between Art And
Science, But Among The Arts Themselves, And Among The Sciences
Themselves.
Part 2 Chapter 3 (On The Genesis Of Science) Pg 118
How Completely The Analogy Holds Throughout, Becomes Yet Clearer When We
Recognise The Fact That _The Sciences Are Arts To Each Other_. If, As
Occurs In Almost Every Case, The Fact To Be Analysed By Any Science, Has
First To Be Prepared--To Be Disentangled From Disturbing Facts By The
Afore Discovered Methods Of Other Sciences; The Other Sciences So Used,
Stand In The Position Of Arts. If, In Solving A Dynamical Problem, A
Parallelogram Is Drawn, Of Which The Sides And Diagonal Represent
Forces, And By Putting Magnitudes Of Extension For Magnitudes Of Force A
Measurable Relation Is Established Between Quantities Not Else To Be
Dealt With; It May Be Fairly Said That Geometry Plays Towards Mechanics
Much The Same Part That The Fire Of The Founder Plays Towards The Metal
He Is Going To Cast. If, In Analysing The Phenomena Of The Coloured
Rings Surrounding The Point Of Contact Between Two Lenses, A Newton
Ascertains By Calculation The Amount Of Certain Interposed Spaces, Far
Too Minute For Actual Measurement; He Employs The Science Of Number For
Essentially The Same Purpose As That For Which The Watchmaker Employs
Tools. If, Before Writing Down His Observation On A Star, The Astronomer
Has To Separate From It All The Errors Resulting From Atmospheric And
Optical Laws, It Is Manifest That The Refraction-Tables, And
Logarithm-Books, And Formulæ, Which He Successively Uses, Serve Him Much
As Retorts, And Filters, And Cupels Serve The Assayer Who Wishes To
Separate The Pure Gold From All Accompanying Ingredients.
So Close, Indeed, Is The Relationship, That It Is Impossible To Say
Where Science Begins And Art Ends. All The Instruments Of The Natural
Philosopher Are The Products Of Art; The Adjusting One Of Them For Use
Is An Art; There Is Art In Making An Observation With One Of Them; It
Requires Art Properly To Treat The Facts Ascertained; Nay, Even The
Employing Established Generalisations To Open The Way To New
Generalisations, May Be Considered As Art. In Each Of These Cases
Previously Organised Knowledge Becomes The Implement By Which New
Knowledge Is Got At: And Whether That Previously Organised Knowledge Is
Embodied In A Tangible Apparatus Or In A Formula, Matters Not In So Far
As Its Essential Relation To The New Knowledge Is Concerned. If, As No
One Will Deny, Art Is Applied Knowledge, Then Such Portion Of A
Scientific Investigation As Consists Of Applied Knowledge Is Art. So
That We May Even Say That As Soon As Any Prevision In Science Passes Out
Of Its Originally Passive State, And Is Employed For Reaching Other
Previsions, It Passes From Theory Into Practice--Becomes Science In
Action--Becomes Art. And When We Thus See How Purely Conventional Is The
Ordinary Distinction, How Impossible It Is To Make Any Real
Separation--When We See Not Only That Science And Art Were Originally
One; That The Arts Have Perpetually Assisted Each Other; That There Has
Been A Constant Reciprocation Of Aid Between The Sciences And Arts; But
That The Sciences Act As Arts To Each Other, And That The Established
Part Of Each Science Becomes An Art To The Growing Part--When We
Recognise The Closeness Of These Associations, We Shall The More Clearly
Perceive That As The Connection Of The Arts With Each Other Has Been
Ever Becoming More Intimate; As The Help Given By Sciences To Arts And
By Arts To Sciences, Has Been Age By Age Increasing; So The
Interdependence Of The Sciences Themselves Has Been Ever Growing
Greater, Their Mutual Relations More Involved, Their _Consensus_ More
Active.
In Here Ending Our Sketch Of The Genesis Of Science, We Are Conscious Of
Having Done The Subject But Scant Justice. Two Difficulties Have Stood
In Our Way: One, The Having To Touch On So Many Points In Such Small
Space; The Other, The Necessity Of Treating In Serial Arrangement A
Process Which Is Not Serial--A Difficulty Which Must Ever Attend All
Attempts To Delineate Processes Of Development, Whatever Their Special
Nature. Add To Which, That To Present In Anything Like Completeness And
Proportion, Even The Outlines Of So Vast And Complex A History, Demands
Years Of Study. Nevertheless, We Believe That The Evidence Which Has
Been Assigned Suffices To Substantiate The Leading Propositions With
Which We Set Out. Inquiry Into The First Stages Of Science Confirms The
Conclusion Which We Drew From The Analysis Of Science As Now Existing,
That It Is Not Distinct From Common Knowledge, But An Outgrowth From
It--An Extension Of The Perception By Means Of The Reason.
That Which We Further Found By Analysis To Form The More Specific
Characteristic Of Scientific Previsions, As Contrasted With The
Previsions Of Uncultured Intelligence--Their Quantitativeness--We Also
See To Have Been The Characteristic Alike In The Initial Steps In
Science, And Of All The Steps Succeeding Them. The Facts And Admissions
Cited In Disproof Of The Assertion That The Sciences Follow One Another,
Both Logically And Historically, In The Order Of Their Decreasing
Generality, Have Been Enforced By The Sundry Instances We Have Met With,
In Which The More General Or Abstract Sciences Have Been Advanced Only
At The Instigation Of The More Special Or Concrete--Instances Serving To
Show That A More General Science As Much Owes Its Progress To The
Presentation Of New Problems By A More Special Science, As The More
Special Science Owes Its Progress To The Solutions Which The More
General Science Is Thus Led To Attempt--Instances Therefore Illustrating
The Position That Scientific Advance Is As Much From The Special To The
General As From The General To The Special.
Quite In Harmony With This Position We Find To Be The Admissions That
The Sciences Are As Branches Of One Trunk, And That They Were At First
Cultivated Simultaneously; And This Harmony Becomes The More Marked On
Finding, As We Have Done, Not Only That The Sciences Have A Common Root,
But That Science In General Has A Common Root With Language,
Classification, Reasoning, Art; That Throughout Civilisation These Have
Advanced Together, Acting And Reacting Upon Each Other Just As The
Separate Sciences Have Done; And That Thus The Development Of
Intelligence In All Its Divisions And Subdivisions Has Conformed To This
Same Law Which We Have Shown That The Sciences Conform To. From All
Which We May Perceive That The Sciences Can With No Greater Propriety Be
Arranged In A Succession, Than Language, Classification, Reasoning, Art,
And Science, Can Be Arranged In A Succession; That, However Needful A
Succession May Be For The Convenience Of Books And Catalogues, It Must
Be Recognised Merely As A Convention; And That So Far From Its Being The
Function Of A Philosophy Of The Sciences To Establish A Hierarchy, It Is
Its Function To Show That The Linear Arrangements Required For Literary
Purposes, Have None Of Them Any Basis Either In Nature Or History.
There Is One Further Remark We Must Not Omit--A Remark Touching The
Importance Of The Question That Has Been Discussed. Unfortunately It
Commonly
Comments (0)