Decline of Science in England - Charles Babbage (reading well .txt) 📗
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OF HOAXING. This, perhaps, will be better explained by an
example. In the year 1788, M. Gioeni, a knight of Malta,
published at Naples an account of a new family of Testacea, of
which he described, with great minuteness, one species, the
specific name of which has been taken from its habitat, and the
generic he took from his own family, calling it Gioenia Sicula.
It consisted of two rounded triangular valves, united by the body
of the animal to a smaller valve in front. He gave figures of
the animal, and of its parts; described its structure, its mode
of advancing along the sand, the figure of the tract it left, and
estimated the velocity of its course at about two-thirds of an
inch per minute. He then described the structure of the shell,
which he treated with nitric acid, and found it approach nearer
to the nature of bone than any other shell.
The editors of the ENCYCLOPEDIE METHODIQUE, have copied this
description, and have given figures of the Gioenia Sicula. The
fact, however, is, that no such animal exists, but that the
knight of Malta, finding on the Sicilian shores the three
internal bones of one of the species of Bulla, of which some are
found on the south-western coast of England, [Bulla lignaria]
described and figured these bones most accurately, and drew the
whole of the rest of the description from the stores of his own
imagination.
Such frauds are far from justifiable; the only excuse which has
been made for them is, when they have been practised on
scientific academies which had reached the period of dotage. It
should however be remembered, that the productions of nature are
so various, that mere strangeness is very far from sufficient to
render doubtful the existence of any creature for which there is
evidence; [The number of vertebrae in the neck of the
plesiosaurus is a strange but ascertained fact] and that, unless
the memoir itself involves principles so contradictory, as to
outweigh the evidence of a single witness, [The kind of
contradiction which is here alluded to, is that which arises from
well ascertained final causes; for instance, the ruminating
stomach of the hoofed animals, is in no case combined with the
claw-shaped form of the extremities, frequent in many of the
carniverous animals, and necessary to some of them for the
purpose of seizing their prey] it can only be regarded as a
deception, without the accompaniment of wit.
FORGING differs from hoaxing, inasmuch as in the latter the
deceit is intended to last for a time, and then be discovered, to
the ridicule of those who have credited it; whereas the forger is
one who, wishing to acquire a reputation for science, records
observations which he has never made. This is sometimes
accomplished in astronomical observations by calculating the time
and circumstances of the phenomenon from tables. The observations
of the second comet of 1784, which was only seen by the Chevalier
D’Angos, were long suspected to be a forgery, and were at length
proved to be so by the calculations and reasonings of Encke. The
pretended observations did not accord amongst each other in
giving any possible orbit. But M. Encke detected an orbit,
belonging to some of the observations, from which he found that
all the rest might be almost precisely deduced, provided a
mistake of a unity in the index of the logarithm of the radius
vector were supposed to have been made in all the rest of the
calculations. ZACH. CORR. ASTRON. Tom. IV. p. 456.
Fortunately instances of the occurrence of forging are rare.
TRIMMING consists in clipping off little bits here and there from
those observations which differ most in excess from the mean, and
in sticking them on to those which are too small; a species of
“equitable adjustment,” as a radical would term it, which cannot
be admitted in science.
This fraud is not perhaps so injurious (except to the character
of the trimmer) as cooking, which the next paragraph will teach,
The reason of this is, that the AVERAGE given by the observations
of the trimmer is the same, whether they are trimmed or
untrimmed. His object is to gain a reputation for extreme
accuracy in making observations; but from respect for truth, or
from a prudent foresight, he does not distort the position of the
fact he gets from nature, and it is usually difficult to detect
him. He has more sense or less adventure than the Cook.
OF COOKING. This is an art of various forms, the object of which
is to give to ordinary observations the appearance and character
of those of the highest degree of accuracy.
One of its numerous processes is to make multitudes of
observations, and out of these to select those only which agree,
or very nearly agree. If a hundred observations are made, the
cook must be very unlucky if he cannot pick out fifteen or twenty
which will do for serving up.
Another approved receipt, when the observations to be used will
not come within the limit of accuracy, which it has been resolved
they shall possess, is to calculate them by two different
formulae. The difference in the constants employed in those
formulae has sometimes a most happy effect in promoting unanimity
amongst discordant measures. If still greater accuracy is
required, three or more formulae can be used.
It must be admitted that this receipt is in some instances rather
hazardous: but in cases where the positions of stars, as given
in different catalogues, occur, or different tables of specific
gravities, specific heats, &c. &c., it may safely be employed.
As no catalogue contains all stars, the computer must have
recourse to several; and if he is obliged to use his judgment in
the selection, it would be cruel to deny him any little advantage
which might result from it. It may, however, be necessary to
guard against one mistake into which persons might fall.
If an observer calculate particular stars from a catalogue which
makes them accord precisely with the rest of his results,
whereas, had they been computed from other catalogues the
difference would have been considerable, it is very unfair to
accuse him of COOKING; for—those catalogues may have been
notoriously inaccurate; or—they may have been superseded by
others more recent, or made with better instruments; or—the
observer may have been totally ignorant of their existence.
It sometimes happens that the constant quantities in formulae
given by the highest authorities, although they differ amongst
themselves, yet they will not suit the materials. This is
precisely the point in which the skill of the artist is shown;
and an accomplished cook will carry himself triumphantly through
it, provided happily some mean value of such constants will fit
his observations. He will discuss the relative merits of
formulae he has just knowledge enough to use; and, with admirable
candour assigning their proper share of applause to Bessel, to
Gauss, and to Laplace, he will take THAT mean value of the
constant used by three such philosophers, which will make his own
observations accord to a miracle.
There are some few reflections which I would venture to suggest
to those who cook, although they may perhaps not receive the
attention which, in my opinion, they deserve, from not coming
from the pen of an adept.
In the first place, it must require much time to try different
formulae. In the next place it may happen that, in the progress
of human knowledge, more correct formula: may be discovered, and
constants may be determined with far greater precision. Or it
may be found that some physical circumstance influences the
results, (although unsuspected at the time) the measure of which
circumstance may perhaps be recovered from other contemporary
registers of facts. [Imagine, by way of example, the state of
the barometer or thermometer.] Or if the selection of
observations has been made with the view of its agreeing
precisely with the latest determination, there is some little
danger that the average of the whole may differ from that of the
chosen ones, owing to some law of nature, dependent on the
interval between the two sets, which law some future philosopher
may discover, and thus the very best observations may have been
thrown aside.
In all these, and in numerous other cases, it would most probably
happen that the cook would procure a temporary reputation for
unrivalled accuracy at the expense of his permanent fame. It
might also have the effect of rendering even all his crude
observations of no value; for that part of the scientific world
whose opinion is of most weight, is generally so unreasonable, as
to neglect altogether the observations of those in whom they
have, on any occasion, discovered traces of the artist. In fact,
the character of an observer, as of a woman, if doubted is
destroyed.
The manner in which facts apparently lost are restored to light,
even after considerable intervals of time, is sometimes very
unexpected, and a few examples may not be without their use. The
thermometers employed by the philosophers who composed the
Academia Del Cimento, have been lost; and as they did not use the
two fixed points of freezing and boiling water, the results of a
great mass of observations have remained useless from our
ignorance of the value of a degree on their instrument. M.
Libri, of Florence, proposed to regain this knowledge by
comparing their registers of the temperature of the human body
and of that of some warm springs in Tuscany, which have preserved
their heat uniform during a century, as well as of other things
similarly circumstanced.
Another illustration was pointed out to me by M. Gazzeri, the
Professor of Chemistry at Florence. A few years ago an important
suit in one of the legal courts of Tuscany depended on
ascertaining whether a certain word had been erased by some
chemical process from a deed then before the court. The party
who insisted that an erasure had been made, availed themselves of
the knowledge of M. Gazzeri, who, concluding that those who
committed the fraud would be satisfied by the disappearance of
the colouring matter of the ink, suspected (either from some
colourless matter remaining in the letters, or perhaps from the
agency of the solvent having weakened the fabric of the paper
itself beneath the supposed letters) that the effect of the slow
application of heat would be to render some difference of texture
or of applied substance evident, by some variety in the shade of
colour which heat in such circumstances might be expected to
produce. Permission having been given to try the experiment, on
the application of heat the important word reappeared, to the
great satisfaction of the court.
CHAPTER VI.
SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE IN ENGLAND.
SECTION 1.
OF THE NECESSITY THAT MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SHOULD EXPRESS
THEIR OPINIONS.
One of the causes which has contributed to the success of the
PARTY, is to be found in the great reluctance with which many of
those whose names added lustre to the Society expressed their
opinions, and the little firmness with which they maintained
their objections. How many times have those whose activity was
additionally stimulated by their interest, proposed measures
which a few words might have checked; whilst the names of those
whose culpable silence thus permitted the project to be matured,
were immediately afterwards cited by their grateful coadjutors,
as having sanctioned that which in their hearts they knew to be a
job.
Even in the few cases which have passed the limits of such
forbearance, when the subject has been debated in the Council,
more than one, more than two instances are known, where
subsequent circumstances have occurred, which proved, with the
most irresistible
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