The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century - Thomas Henry Huxley (books suggested by bill gates .txt) 📗
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An incalculable benefit has accrued to geological science from the accurate and detailed surveys, which have now been executed by skilled geologists employed by the Governments of all parts of the civilised world. In geology, the study of large maps is as important as it is said to be in politics; and sections, on a true scale, are even more important, in so far as they are essential to the apprehension of the extraordinary insignificance of geological perturbations in relation to the whole mass of our planet. It should never be forgotten that what we call 'catastrophes,' are, in relation to the earth, changes, the equivalents of which would be well represented by the development of a few pimples, or the scratch of a pin, on a man's head. Vast regions of the earth's surface remain geologically unknown; but the area already fairly explored is many times greater than it was in 1837; and, in many parts of Europe and the United States, the structure of the superficial crust of the earth has been investigated with great minuteness.
The parallel between Biology and Geology, which I have drawn, is further illustrated by the modern growth of that branch of the science known as Petrology, which answers to Histology, and has made the microscope as essential an instrument to the geological as to the biological investigator.
The evidence of the importance of causes now in operation has been wonderfully enlarged by the study of glacial phenomena; by that of earthquakes and volcanoes; and by that of the efficacy of heat and cold, wind, rain, and rivers as agents of denudation and transport. On the other hand, the exploration of coral reefs and of the deposits now taking place at the bottom of the great oceans, has proved that, in animal and plant life, we have agents of reconstruction of a potency hitherto unsuspected.
There is no study better fitted than that of geology to impress upon men of general culture that conviction of the unbroken sequence of the order of natural phenomena, throughout the duration of the universe, which is the great, and perhaps the most important, effect of the increase of natural knowledge.
THE END.
[A] There are excellent remarks to the same effect in Zeller's Philosophie der Griechen, Theil II. Abth. ii p. 407, and in Eucken's Die Methode der Aristotelischen, Forschung, pp. 136 et seq.
[B] Fresnel, after a brilliant career of discovery in some of the most difficult regions of physico-mathematical science, died at thirty-nine years of age. The following passage of a letter from him to Young (written in November 1824), quoted by Whewell, so aptly illustrates the spirit which animates the scientific inquirer that I may cite it:
'For a long time that sensibility, or that vanity, which people call love of glory is munch blunted in me. I labor much less to catch the suffrages of the public than to obtain an inward approval which has always been the mental reward of my efforts. Without doubt I have often wanted the spur of vanity to excite me to pursue my researches in moments of disgust and discouragement. But all the compliments which I have received from M.M. Arago, De Laplace, or Biot, never gave me so much pleasure as the discovery of a theoretical truth or the confirmation of a calculation by experiment.'
[C] 'Mémorable exemple de l'impuissance des recherches collectives appliquées à la découverte des vérités nouvelles!' says one of the most distinguished of living French savants of the corporate chemical work of the old Académie des Sciences. (See Berthelot, Science et Philosophie, p. 201.)
[D] I am particularly indebted to my friend and colleague Professor Rücker, F.R.S., for the many acute criticisms and suggestions on my remarks respecting the ultimate problems of physics, with which he has favored me, and by which I have greatly profited.
[E] I am aware that this proposition may be challenged. It may be said, for example, that, on the hypothesis of Boscovich, matter has no extension, being reduced to mathematical points serving as centres of 'forces.' But as the 'forces' of the various centres are conceived to limit one another's action in such a manner that an area around each centre has an individuality of its own extension comes back in the form of that area. Again, a very eminent mathematician and physicist—the late Clerk Maxwell—has declared that impenetrability is not essential to our notions of matter, and that two atoms may conceivably occupy the same space. I am loth to dispute any dictum of a philosopher as remarkable for the subtlety of his intellect as for his vast knowledge; but the assertion that one and the same point or area of space can have different (conceivably opposite) attributes appears to me to violate the principle of contradiction, which is the foundation not only of physical science, but of logic in general. It means that A can be not-A.
[F] 'Molecule' would be the more appropriate name for such a particle. Unfortunately, chemists employ this term in a special sense, as a name for an aggregation of their smallest particles, for which they retain the designation of 'atoms.'
[G] 'At present more organic analyses are made in a single day than were accomplished before Liebig's time in a whole year.'—Hofmann, Faraday Lecture, p. 46.
[H] In the preface to his Mécanique Chimique M. Berthelot declares his object to be 'ramener la chimie tout entirère ... aux mêmes principes mécaniques qui régissent déjà les diverses branches de la physique.'
[I] This is the more curious, as Ampère's hypothesis that vibrations of molecules, causing and caused by vibrations of the ether, constitute heat, is discussed. See vol. ii. p. 587, 2nd ed. In the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 2nd ed., 1847, p. 239, Whewell remarks, à propos of Bacon's definition of heat, 'that it is an expansive, restrained motion, modified in certain ways, and exerted in the smaller particles of the body;' that 'although the exact nature of heat is still an obscure and controverted matter, the science of heat now consists of many important truths; and that to none of these truths is there any approximation in Bacon's essay.' In point of fact, Bacon's statement, however much open to criticism, does contain a distinct approximation to the most important of all the truths respecting heat which had been discovered when Whewell wrote.
[J] Perhaps I ought rather to say Button's axiom. For that great naturalist and writer embodied the principles of sound geology in a pithy phrase of the Théoris de la Terre: 'Pour juger de ce qui est arrivé, et même de ce qui arrivera, nous n'avons qu'à examiner ce qui arrive.'
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