Illustrations of Universal Progress Part 9

Still, the ability to predict events recurring only after so long a period as eighteen years, implies a considerable advance in civilization--a considerable development of general knowledge; and we have now to inquire what progress in other sciences accompanied, and was necessary to, these astronomical previsions. In the first place, there must clearly have been a tolerably efficient system of calculation. Mere finger-counting, mere head-reckoning, even with the aid of a regular decimal notation, could not have sufficed for numbering the days in a year; much less the years, months, and days between eclipses. Consequently there must have been a mode of registering numbers; probably even a system of numerals. The earliest numerical records, if we may judge by the practices of the less civilized races now existing, were probably kept by notches cut on sticks, or strokes marked on walls; much as public-house scores are kept now. And there seems reason to believe that the first numerals used were simply groups of straight strokes, as some of the still-extant Roman ones are; leading us to suspect that these groups of strokes were used to represent groups of fingers, as the groups of fingers had been used to represent groups of objects--a supposition quite in conformity with the aboriginal system of picture writing and its subsequent modifications. Be this so or not, however, it is manifest that before the Chaldeans discovered their _Saros_, there must have been both a set of written symbols serving for an extensive numeration, and a familiarity with the simpler rules of arithmetic.

Not only must abstract mathematics have made some progress, but concrete mathematics also. It is scarcely possible that the buildings belonging to this era should have been laid out and erected without any knowledge of geometry. At any rate, there must have existed that elementary geometry which deals with direct measurement--with the apposition of lines; and it seems that only after the discovery of those simple proceedings, by which right angles are drawn, and relative positions fixed, could so regular an architecture be executed. In the case of the other division of concrete mathematics--mechanics, we have definite evidence of progress. We know that the lever and the inclined plane were employed during this period: implying that there was a qualitative prevision of their effects, though not a quant.i.tative one. But we know more. We read of weights in the earliest records; and we find weights in ruins of the highest antiquity. Weights imply scales, of which we have also mention; and scales involve the primary theorem of mechanics in its least complicated form--involve not a qualitative but a quant.i.tative prevision of mechanical effects. And here we may notice how mechanics, in common with the other exact sciences, took its rise from the simplest application of the idea of _equality_. For the mechanical proposition which the scales involve, is, that if a lever with _equal_ arms, have _equal_ weights suspended from them, the weights will remain at _equal_ alt.i.tudes. And we may further notice, how, in this first step of rational mechanics, we see ill.u.s.trated that truth awhile since referred to, that as magnitudes of linear extension are the only ones of which the equality is exactly ascertainable, the equalities of other magnitudes have at the outset to be determined by means of them. For the equality of the weights which balance each other in scales, wholly depends upon the equality of the arms: we can know that the weights are equal only by proving that the arms are equal. And when by this means we have obtained a system of weights,--a set of equal units of force, then does a science of mechanics become possible. Whence, indeed, it follows, that rational mechanics could not possibly have any other starting-point than the scales.

Let us further remember, that during this same period there was a limited knowledge of chemistry. The many arts which we know to have been carried on must have been impossible without a generalized experience of the modes in which certain bodies affect each other under special conditions. In metallurgy, which was extensively practised, this is abundantly ill.u.s.trated. And we even have evidence that in some cases the knowledge possessed was, in a sense, quant.i.tative. For, as we find by a.n.a.lysis that the hard alloy of which the Egyptians made their cutting tools, was composed of copper and tin in fixed proportions, there must have been an established prevision that such an alloy was to be obtained only by mixing them in these proportions. It is true, this was but a simple empirical generalization; but so was the generalization respecting the recurrence of eclipses; so are the first generalizations of every science.

Respecting the simultaneous advance of the sciences during this early epoch, it only remains to remark that even the most complex of them must have made some progress--perhaps even a greater relative progress than any of the rest. For under what conditions only were the foregoing developments possible? There first required an established and organized social system.

A long continued registry of eclipses; the building of palaces; the use of scales; the practice of metallurgy--alike imply a fixed and populous nation. The existence of such a nation not only presupposes laws, and some administration of justice, which we know existed, but it presupposes successful laws--laws conforming in some degree to the conditions of social stability--laws enacted because it was seen that the actions forbidden by them were dangerous to the State. We do not by any means say that all, or even the greater part, of the laws were of this nature; but we do say, that the fundamental ones were. It cannot be denied that the laws affecting life and property were such. It cannot be denied that, however little these were enforced between cla.s.s and cla.s.s, they were to a considerable extent enforced between members of the same cla.s.s. It can scarcely be questioned, that the administration of them between members of the same cla.s.s was seen by rulers to be necessary for keeping their subjects together. And knowing, as we do, that, other things equal, nations prosper in proportion to the justness of their arrangements, we may fairly infer that the very cause of the advance of these earliest nations out of aboriginal barbarism, was the greater recognition among them of the claims to life and property.

But supposition aside, it is clear that the habitual recognition of these claims in their laws, implied some prevision of social phenomena. Even thus early there was a certain amount of social science. Nay, it may even be shown that there was a vague recognition of that fundamental principle on which all the true social science is based--the equal rights of all to the free exercise of their faculties. That same idea of _equality_, which, as we have seen, underlies all other science, underlies also morals and sociology. The conception of justice, which is the primary one in morals; and the administration of justice, which is the vital condition of social existence; are impossible, without the recognition of a certain likeness in men's claims, in virtue of their common humanity. _Equity_ literally means _equalness_; and if it be admitted that there were even the vaguest ideas of equity in these primitive eras, it must be admitted that there was some appreciation of the equalness of men's liberties to pursue the objects of life--some appreciation, therefore, of the essential principle of national equilibrium.

Thus in this initial stage of the positive sciences, before geometry had yet done more than evolve a few empirical rules--before mechanics had pa.s.sed beyond its first theorem--before astronomy had advanced from its merely chronological phase into the geometrical; the most involved of the sciences had reached a certain degree of development--a development without which no progress in other sciences was possible.

Only noting as we pa.s.s, how, thus early, we may see that the progress of exact science was not only towards an increasing number of previsions, but towards previsions more accurately quant.i.tative--how, in astronomy, the recurring period of the moon's motions was by and by more correctly ascertained to be nineteen years, or two hundred and thirty-five lunations; how Callipus further corrected this Metonic cycle, by leaving out a day at the end of every seventy-six years; and how these successive advances implied a longer continued registry of observations, and the co-ordination of a greater number of facts--let us go on to inquire how geometrical astronomy took its rise.

The first astronomical instrument was the gnomon. This was not only early in use in the East, but it was found also among the Mexicans; the sole astronomical observations of the Peruvians were made by it; and we read that 1100 B.C., the Chinese found that, at a certain place, the length of the sun's shadow, at the summer solstice, was to the height of the gnomon, as one and a half to eight. Here again it is observable, not only that the instrument is found ready made, but that Nature is perpetually performing the process of measurement. Any fixed, erect object--a column, a dead palm, a pole, the angle of a building--serves for a gnomon; and it needs but to notice the changing position of the shadow it daily throws, to make the first step in geometrical astronomy. How small this first step was, may be seen in the fact that the only things ascertained at the outset were the periods of the summer and winter solstices, which corresponded with the least and greatest lengths of the mid-day shadow; and to fix which, it was needful merely to mark the point to which each day's shadow reached.

And now let it not be overlooked that in the observing at what time during the next year this extreme limit of the shadow was again reached, and in the inference that the sun had then arrived at the same turning point in his annual course, we have one of the simplest instances of that combined use of _equal magnitudes_ and _equal relations_, by which all exact science, all quant.i.tative prevision, is reached. For the relation observed was between the length of the sun's shadow and his position in the heavens; and the inference drawn was that when, next year, the extremity of his shadow came to the same point, he occupied the same place. That is, the, ideas involved were, the equality of the shadows, and the equality of the relations between shadow and sun in successive years. As in the case of the scales, the equality of relations here recognized is of the simplest order.

It is not as those habitually dealt with in the higher kinds of scientific reasoning, which answer to the general type--the relation between two and three equals the relation between six and nine; but it follows the type--the relation between two and three, equals the relation between two and three; it is a case of not simply _equal_ relations, but _coinciding_ relations. And here, indeed, we may see beautifully ill.u.s.trated how the idea of equal relations takes its rise after the same manner that that of equal magnitude does. As already shown, the idea of equal magnitudes arose from the observed coincidence of two lengths placed together; and in this case we have not only two coincident lengths of shadows, but two coincident relations between sun and shadows.

From the use of the gnomon there naturally grew up the conception of angular measurements; and with the advance of geometrical conceptions there came the hemisphere of Berosus, the equinoctial armil, the solst.i.tial armil, and the quadrant of Ptolemy--all of them employing shadows as indices of the sun's position, but in combination with angular divisions.

It is obviously out of the question for us here to trace these details of progress. It must suffice to remark that in all of them we may see that notion of equality of relations of a more complex kind, which is best ill.u.s.trated in the astrolabe, an instrument which consisted "of circular rims, moveable one within the other, or about poles, and contained circles which were to be brought into the position of the ecliptic, and of a plane pa.s.sing through the sun and the poles of the ecliptic"--an instrument, therefore, which represented, as by a model, the relative positions of certain imaginary lines and planes in the heavens; which was adjusted by putting these representative lines and planes into parallelism and coincidence with the celestial ones; and which depended for its use upon the perception that the relations between these representative lines and planes were _equal_ to the relations between those represented.

Were there s.p.a.ce, we might go on to point out how the conception of the heavens as a revolving hollow sphere, the discovery of the globular form of the earth, the explanation of the moon's phases, and indeed all the successive steps taken, involved this same mental process. But we must content ourselves with referring to the theory of eccentrics and epicycles, as a further marked ill.u.s.tration of it. As first suggested, and as proved by Hipparchus to afford an explanation of the leading irregularities in the celestial motions, this theory involved the perception that the progressions, retrogressions, and variations of velocity seen in the heavenly bodies, might be reconciled with their a.s.sumed uniform movement in circles, by supposing that the earth was not in the centre of their orbits; or by supposing that they revolved in circles whose centres revolved round the earth; or by both. The discovery that this would account for the appearances, was the discovery that in certain geometrical diagrams the relations were such, that the uniform motion of a point would, when looked at from a particular position, present a.n.a.logous irregularities; and the calculations of Hipparchus involved the belief that the relations subsisting among these geometrical curves were _equal_ to the relations subsisting among the celestial orbits.

Leaving here these details of astronomical progress, and the philosophy of it, let us observe how the relatively concrete science of geometrical astronomy, having been thus far helped forward by the development of geometry in general, reacted upon geometry, caused it also to advance, and was again a.s.sisted by it. Hipparchus, before making his solar and lunar tables, had to discover rules for calculating the relations between the sides and angles of triangles--_trigonometry_, a subdivision of pure mathematics. Further, the reduction of the doctrine of the sphere to the quant.i.tative form needed for astronomical purposes, required the formation of a _spherical trigonometry_, which was also achieved by Hipparchus. Thus both plane and spherical trigonometry, which are parts of the highly abstract and simple science of extension, remained undeveloped until the less abstract and more complex science of the celestial motions had need of them. The fact admitted by M. Comte, that since Descartes the progress of the abstract division of mathematics has been determined by that of the concrete division, is paralleled by the still more significant fact that even thus early the progress of mathematics was determined by that of astronomy.

And here, indeed, we may see exemplified the truth, which the subsequent history of science frequently ill.u.s.trates, that before any more abstract division makes a further advance, some more concrete division must suggest the necessity for that advance--must present the new order of questions to be solved. Before astronomy presented Hipparchus with the problem of solar tables, there was nothing to raise the question of the relations between lines and angles; the subject-matter of trigonometry had not been conceived. And as there must be subject-matter before there can be investigation, it follows that the progress of the concrete divisions is as necessary to that of the abstract, as the progress of the abstract to that of the concrete.

Just incidentally noticing the circ.u.mstance that the epoch we are describing witnessed the evolution of algebra, a comparatively abstract division of mathematics, by the union of its less abstract divisions, geometry and arithmetic--a fact proved by the earliest extant samples of algebra, which are half algebraic, half geometric--we go on to observe that during the era in which mathematics and astronomy were thus advancing, rational mechanics made its second step; and something was done towards giving a quant.i.tative form to hydrostatics, optics, and harmonics. In each case we shall see as before, how the idea of equality underlies all quant.i.tative prevision; and in what simple forms this idea is first applied.

As already shown, the first theorem established in mechanics was, that equal weights suspended from a lever with equal arms would remain in equilibrium. Archimedes discovered that a lever with unequal arms was in equilibrium when one weight was to its arm as the other arm to its weight; that is--when the numerical relation between one weight and its arm was _equal_ to the numerical relation between the other arm and its weight.

The first advance made in hydrostatics, which we also owe to Archimedes, was the discovery that fluids press _equally_ in all directions; and from this followed the solution of the problem of floating bodies: namely, that they are in equilibrium when the upward and downward pressures are _equal_.

In optics, again, the Greeks found that the angle of incidence is _equal_ to the angle of reflection; and their knowledge reached no further than to such simple deductions from this as their geometry sufficed for. In harmonics they ascertained the fact that three strings of _equal_ lengths would yield the octave, fifth and fourth, when strained by weights having certain definite ratios; and they did not progress much beyond this. In the one of which cases we see geometry used in elucidation of the laws of light; and in the other, geometry and arithmetic made to measure the phenomena of sound.

Did s.p.a.ce permit, it would be desirable here to describe the state of the less advanced sciences--to point out how, while a few had thus reached the first stages of quant.i.tative prevision, the rest were progressing in qualitative prevision--how some small generalizations were made respecting evaporation, and heat, and electricity, and magnetism, which, empirical as they were, did not in that respect differ from the first generalizations of every science--how the Greek physicians had made advances in physiology and pathology, which, considering the great imperfection of our present knowledge, are by no means to be despised--how zoology had been so far systematized by Aristotle, as, to some extent, enabled him from the presence of certain organs to predict the presence of others--how in Aristotle's _Politics_, there is some progress towards a scientific conception of social phenomena, and sundry previsions respecting them--and how in the state of the Greek societies, as well as in the writings of Greek philosophers, we may recognise not only an increasing clearness in that conception of equity on which the social science is based, but also some appreciation of the fact that social stability depends upon the maintenance of equitable regulations. We might dwell at length upon the causes which r.e.t.a.r.ded the development of some of the sciences, as for example, chemistry: showing that relative complexity had nothing to do with it--that the oxidation of a piece of iron is a simpler phenomenon than the recurrence of eclipses, and the discovery of carbonic acid less difficult than that of the precession of the equinoxes--but that the relatively slow advance of chemical knowledge was due, partly to the fact that its phenomena were not daily thrust on men's notice as those of astronomy were; partly to the fact that Nature does not habitually supply the means, and suggest the modes of investigation, as in the sciences dealing with time, extension, and force; and partly to the fact that the great majority of the materials with which chemistry deals, instead of being ready to hand, are made known only by the arts in their slow growth; and partly to the fact that even when known, their chemical properties are not self-exhibited, but have to be sought out by experiment.

Merely indicating all these considerations, however, let us go on to contemplate the progress and mutual influence of the sciences in modern days; only parenthetically noticing how, on the revival of the scientific spirit, the successive stages achieved exhibit the dominance of the same law hitherto traced--how the primary idea in dynamics, a uniform force, was defined by Galileo to be a force which generates _equal_ velocities in _equal_ successive times--how the uniform action of gravity was first experimentally determined by showing that the time elapsing before a body thrown up, stopped, was _equal_ to the time it took to fall--how the first fact in compound motion which Galileo ascertained was, that a body projected horizontally will have a uniform motion onwards and a uniformly accelerated motion downwards; that is, will describe _equal_ horizontal s.p.a.ces in _equal_ times, compounded with _equal_ vertical increments in _equal_ times--how his discovery respecting the pendulum was, that its oscillations occupy _equal_ intervals of time whatever their length--how the principle of virtual velocities which he established is, that in any machine the weights that balance each other, are reciprocally as their virtual velocities; that is, the relation of one set of weights to their velocities _equals_ the relation of the other set of velocities to their weights;--and how thus his achievements consisted in showing the equalities of certain magnitudes and relations, whose equalities had not been previously recognised.

When mechanics had reached the point to which Galileo brought it--when the simple laws of force had been disentangled from the friction and atmospheric resistance by which all their earthly manifestations are disguised--when progressing knowledge of _physics_ had given a due insight into these disturbing causes--when, by an effort of abstraction, it was perceived that all motion would be uniform and rectilinear unless interfered with by external forces--and when the various consequences of this perception had been worked out; then it became possible, by the union of geometry and mechanics, to initiate physical astronomy. Geometry and mechanics having diverged from a common root in men's sensible experiences; having, with occasional inosculations, been separately developed, the one partly in connexion with astronomy, the other solely by a.n.a.lyzing terrestrial movements; now join in the investigations of Newton to create a true theory of the celestial motions. And here, also, we have to notice the important fact that, in the very process of being brought jointly to bear upon astronomical problems, they are themselves raised to a higher phase of development. For it was in dealing with the questions raised by celestial dynamics that the then incipient infinitesimal calculus was unfolded by Newton and his continental successors; and it was from inquiries into the mechanics of the solar system that the general theorems of mechanics contained in the "Principia,"--many of them of purely terrestrial application--took their rise. Thus, as in the case of Hipparchus, the presentation of a new order of concrete facts to be a.n.a.lyzed, led to the discovery of new abstract facts; and these abstract facts having been laid hold of, gave means of access to endless groups of concrete facts before incapable of quant.i.tative treatment.

Meanwhile, physics had been carrying further that progress without which, as just shown, rational mechanics could not be disentangled. In hydrostatics, Stevinus had extended and applied the discovery of Archimedes. Torricelli had proved atmospheric pressure, "by showing that this pressure sustained different liquids at heights inversely proportional to their densities;" and Pascal "established the necessary diminution of this pressure at increasing heights in the atmosphere:" discoveries which in part reduced this branch of science to a quant.i.tative form. Something had been done by Daniel Bernoulli towards the dynamics of fluids. The thermometer had been invented; and a number of small generalizations reached by it. Huyghens and Newton had made considerable progress in optics; Newton had approximately calculated the rate of transmission of sound; and the continental mathematicians had succeeded in determining some of the laws of sonorous vibrations. Magnetism and electricity had been considerably advanced by Gilbert. Chemistry had got as far as the mutual neutralization of acids and alkalies. And Leonardo da Vinci had advanced in geology to the conception of the deposition of marine strata as the origin of fossils. Our present purpose does not require that we should give particulars. All that it here concerns us to do is to ill.u.s.trate the _consensus_ subsisting in this stage of growth, and afterwards. Let as look at a few cases.

The theoretic law of the velocity of sound enunciated by Newton on purely mechanical considerations, was found wrong by one-sixth. The error remained unaccounted for until the time of Laplace, who, suspecting that the heat disengaged by the compression of the undulating strata of the air, gave additional elasticity, and so produced the difference, made the needful calculations and found he was right. Thus acoustics was arrested until thermology overtook and aided it. When Boyle and Marriot had discovered the relation between the density of gases and the pressures they are subject to; and when it thus became possible to calculate the rate of decreasing density in the upper parts of the atmosphere; it also became possible to make approximate tables of the atmospheric refraction of light. Thus optics, and with it astronomy, advanced with barology. After the discovery of atmospheric pressure had led to the invention of the air-pump by Otto Guericke; and after it had become known that evaporation increases in rapidity as atmospheric pressure decreases; it became possible for Leslie, by evaporation in a vacuum, to produce the greatest cold known; and so to extend our knowledge of thermology by showing that there is no zero within reach of our researches. When Fourier had determined the laws of conduction of heat, and when the Earth's temperature had been found to increase below the surface one degree in every forty yards, there were data for inferring the past condition of our globe; the vast period it has taken to cool down to its present state; and the immense age of the solar system--a purely astronomical consideration.

Chemistry having advanced sufficiently to supply the needful materials, and a physiological experiment having furnished the requisite hint, there came the discovery of galvanic electricity. Galvanism reacting on chemistry disclosed the metallic bases of the alkalies, and inaugurated the electro-chemical theory; in the hands of Oersted and Ampere it led to the laws of magnetic action; and by its aid Faraday has detected significant facts relative to the const.i.tution of light. Brewster's discoveries respecting double refraction and dipolarization proved the essential truth of the cla.s.sification of crystalline forms according to the number of axes, by showing that the molecular const.i.tution depends upon the axes. In these and in numerous other cases, the mutual influence of the sciences has been quite independent of any supposed hierarchical order. Often, too, their inter-actions are more complex than as thus instanced--involve more sciences than two. One ill.u.s.tration of this must suffice. We quote it in full from the _History of the Inductive Sciences_. In Book XI., chap. II., on "The Progress of the Electrical Theory," Dr. Whewell writes:--

"Thus at that period, mathematics was behind experiment, and a problem was proposed, in which theoretical results were wanted for comparison with observation, but could not be accurately obtained; as was the case in astronomy also, till the time of the approximate solution of the problem of three bodies, and the consequent formation of the tables of the moon and planets, on the theory of universal gravitation. After some time, electrical theory was relieved from this reproach, mainly in consequence of the progress which astronomy had occasioned in pure mathematics. About 1801 there appeared in the _Bulletin des Sciences_, an exact solution of the problem of the distribution of electric fluid on a spheroid, obtained by Biot, by the application of the peculiar methods which Laplace had invented for the problem of the figure of the planets. And, in 1811, M.

Poisson applied Laplace's artifices to the case of two spheres acting upon one another in contact, a case to which many of Coulomb's experiments were referrible; and the agreement of the results of theory and observation, thus extricated from Coulomb's numbers obtained above forty years previously, was very striking and convincing."

Not only do the sciences affect each other after this direct manner, but they affect each other indirectly. Where there is no dependence, there is yet a.n.a.logy--_equality of relations_; and the discovery of the relations subsisting among one set of phenomena, constantly suggests a search for the same relations among another set. Thus the established fact that the force of gravitation varies inversely as the square of the distance, being recognized as a necessary characteristic of all influences proceeding from a centre, raised the suspicion that heat and light follow the same law; which proved to be the case--a suspicion and a confirmation which were repeated in respect to the electric and magnetic forces. Thus again the discovery of the polarization of light led to experiments which ended in the discovery of the polarization of heat--a discovery that could never have been made without the antecedent one. Thus, too, the known refrangibility of light and heat lately produced the inquiry whether sound also is not refrangible; which on trial it turns out to be.

In some cases, indeed, it is only by the aid of conceptions derived from one cla.s.s of phenomena that hypotheses respecting other cla.s.ses can be formed. The theory, at one time favoured, that evaporation is a solution of water in air, was an a.s.sumption that the relation between water and air is _like_ the relation between salt and water; and could never have been conceived if the relation between salt and water had not been previously known. Similarly the received theory of evaporation--that it is a diffusion of the particles of the evaporating fluid in virtue of their atomic repulsion--could not have been entertained without a foregoing experience of magnetic and electric repulsions. So complete in recent days has become this _consensus_ among the sciences, caused either by the natural entanglement of their phenomena, or by a.n.a.logies in the relations of their phenomena, that scarcely any considerable discovery concerning one order of facts now takes place, without very shortly leading to discoveries concerning other orders.

To produce a tolerably complete conception of this process of scientific evolution, it would be needful to go back to the beginning, and trace in detail the growth of cla.s.sifications and nomenclatures; and to show how, as subsidiary to science, they have acted upon it, and it has reacted upon them. We can only now remark that, on the one hand, cla.s.sifications and nomenclatures have aided science by continually subdividing the subject-matter of research, and giving fixity and diffusion to the truths disclosed; and that on the other hand, they have caught from it that increasing quant.i.tativeness, and that progress from considerations touching single phenomena to considerations touching the relations among many phenomena, which we have been describing.

Of this last influence a few ill.u.s.trations must be given. In chemistry it is seen in the facts, that the dividing of matter into the four elements was ostensibly based upon the single property of weight; that the first truly chemical division into acid and alkaline bodies, grouped together bodies which had not simply one property in common, but in which one property was constantly related to many others; and that the cla.s.sification now current, places together in groups _supporters of combustion_, _metallic and non-metallic bases_, _acids_, _salts_, &c., bodies which are often quite unlike in sensible qualities, but which are like in the majority of their _relations_ to other bodies. In mineralogy again, the first cla.s.sifications were based upon differences in aspect, texture, and other physical attributes. Berzelius made two attempts at a cla.s.sification based solely on chemical const.i.tution. That now current, recognises as far as possible the _relations_ between physical and chemical characters. In botany the earliest cla.s.ses formed were _trees_, _shrubs_, and _herbs_: magnitude being the basis of distinction. Dioscorides divided vegetables into _aromatic_, _alimentary_, _medicinal_, and _vinous_: a division of chemical character. Caesalpinus cla.s.sified them by the seeds, and seed-vessels, which he preferred because of the _relations_ found to subsist between the character of the fructification and the general character of the other parts.

While the "natural system" since developed, carrying out the doctrine of Linnaeus, that "natural orders must be formed by attention not to one or two, but to _all_ the parts of plants," bases its divisions on like peculiarities which are found to be _constantly related_ to the greatest number of other like peculiarities. And similarly in zoology, the successive cla.s.sifications, from having been originally determined by external and often subordinate characters not indicative of the essential nature, have been gradually more and more determined by those internal and fundamental differences, which have uniform _relations_ to the greatest number of other differences. Nor shall we be surprised at this a.n.a.logy between the modes of progress of positive science and cla.s.sification, when we bear in mind that both proceed by making generalizations; that both enable us to make previsions differing only in their precision; and that while the one deals with equal properties and relations, the other deals with properties and relations that approximate towards equality in variable degrees.

Without further argument, it will, we think, be sufficiently clear that the sciences are none of them separately evolved--are none of them independent either logically or historically; but that all of them have, in a greater or less degree, required aid and reciprocated it. Indeed, it needs but to throw aside theses, and contemplate the mixed character of surrounding phenomena, to at once see that these notions of division and succession in the kinds of knowledge are none of them actually true, but are simple scientific fictions: good, if regarded merely as aids to study; bad, if regarded as representing realities in Nature. Consider them critically, and no facts whatever are presented to our senses uncombined with other facts--no facts whatever but are in some degree disguised by accompanying facts: disguised in such a manner that all must be partially understood before any one can be understood. If it be said, as by M. Comte, that gravitating force should be treated of before other forces, seeing that all things are subject to it, it may on like grounds be said that heat should be first dealt with; seeing that thermal forces are everywhere in action; that the ability of any portion of matter to manifest visible gravitative phenomena depends on its state of aggregation, which is determined by heat; that only by the aid of thermology can we explain those apparent exceptions to the gravitating tendency which are presented by steam and smoke, and so establish its universality, and that, indeed, the very existence of the solar system in a solid form is just as much a question of heat as it is one of gravitation.

Take other cases:--All phenomena recognised by the eyes, through which only are the data of exact science ascertainable, are complicated with optical phenomena; and cannot be exhaustively known until optical principles are known. The burning of a candle cannot be explained without involving chemistry, mechanics, thermology. Every wind that blows is determined by influences partly solar, partly lunar, partly hygrometric; and implies considerations of fluid equilibrium and physical geography. The direction, dip, and variations of the magnetic needle, are facts half terrestrial, half celestial--are caused by earthly forces which have cycles of change corresponding with astronomical periods. The flowing of the gulf-stream and the annual migration of icebergs towards the equator, depending as they do on the balancing of the centripetal and centrifugal forces acting on the ocean, involve in their explanation the Earth's rotation and spheroidal form, the laws of hydrostatics, the relative densities of cold and warm water, and the doctrines of evaporation. It is no doubt true, as M. Comte says, that "our position in the solar system, and the motions, form, size, equilibrium of the ma.s.s of our world among the planets, must be known before we can understand the phenomena going on at its surface." But, fatally for his hypothesis, it is also true that we must understand a great part of the phenomena going on at its surface before we can know its position, &c., in the solar system. It is not simply that, as we have already shown, those geometrical and mechanical principles by which celestial appearances are explained, were first generalized from terrestrial experiences; but it is that the very obtainment of correct data, on which to base astronomical generalizations, implies advanced terrestrial physics.

Until after optics had made considerable advance, the Copernican system remained but a speculation. A single modern observation on a star has to undergo a careful a.n.a.lysis by the combined aid of various sciences--has to _be digested by the organism of the sciences_; which have severally to a.s.similate their respective parts of the observation, before the essential fact it contains is available for the further development of astronomy. It has to be corrected not only for nutation of the earth's 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 ill.u.s.trations, and especially this last one, let us not omit to notice how clearly they exhibit that increasingly active _consensus_ of the sciences which characterizes 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 a.s.sistance 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 a.n.a.logous, 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 inst.i.tutions which have developed the requisite intelligence, the printing and publis.h.i.+ng arrangements which have spread the necessary information, the social organization which has rendered possible such a complex co-operation of agencies.

Further a.n.a.lysis 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 this 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 generalizations and more completely quant.i.tative 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.

How completely the a.n.a.logy 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 a.n.a.lyzed 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 quant.i.ties 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 a.n.a.lyzing the phenomena of the coloured rings surrounding the point of contact between two lenses, a Newton ascertains by calculation the amount of certain interposed s.p.a.ces, 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 formulae, which he successively uses, serve him much as retorts, and filters, and cupels serve the a.s.sayer who wishes to separate the pure gold from all accompanying ingredients.

So close, indeed, is the relations.h.i.+p, 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 generalizations to open the way to new generalizations, may be considered as art. In each of these cases previously organized knowledge becomes the implement by which new knowledge is got at: and whether that previously organized 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 pa.s.ses out of its originally pa.s.sive state, and is employed for reaching other previsions, it pa.s.ses 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 a.s.sisted 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 recognize the closeness of these a.s.sociations, we shall the more clearly perceive that as the connexion 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 s.p.a.ce; 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 a.s.signed 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 a.n.a.lysis to form the more specific characteristic of scientific previsions, as contrasted with the previsions of uncultured intelligence--their quant.i.tativeness--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 a.s.sertion 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 ill.u.s.trating 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, cla.s.sification, reasoning, art; that throughout civilization 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, cla.s.sification, 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 recognized 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 happens that topics of this abstract nature are slighted as of no practical moment; and, we doubt not, that many will think it of very little consequence what theory respecting the genesis of science may be entertained. But the value of truths is often great, in proportion as their generality is wide. Remote as they seem from practical application, the highest generalizations are not unfrequently the most potent in their effects, in virtue of their influence on all those subordinate generalizations which regulate practice. And it must be so here. Whenever established, a correct theory of the historical development of the sciences must have an immense effect upon education; and, through education, upon civilization. Greatly as we differ from him in other respects, we agree with M. Comte in the belief that, rightly conducted, the education of the individual must have a certain correspondence with the evolution of the race.

No one can contemplate the facts we have cited in ill.u.s.tration of the early stages of science, without recognising the _necessity_ of the processes through which those stages were reached--a necessity which, in respect to the leading truths, may likewise be traced in all after stages. This necessity, originating in the very nature of the phenomena to be a.n.a.lyzed and the faculties to be employed, more or less fully applies to the mind of the child as to that of the savage. We say more or less fully, because the correspondence is not special but general only. Were the _environment_ the same in both cases, the correspondence would be complete. But though the surrounding material out of which science is to be organized, is, in many cases, the same to the juvenile mind and the aboriginal mind, it is not so throughout; as, for instance, in the case of chemistry, the phenomena of which are accessible to the one, but were inaccessible to the other. Hence, in proportion as the environment differs, the course of evolution must differ. After admitting sundry exceptions, however, there remains a substantial parallelism; and, if so, it becomes of great moment to ascertain what really has been the process of scientific evolution. The establishment of an erroneous theory must be disastrous in its educational results; while the establishment of a true one must eventually be fertile in school-reforms and consequent social benefits.

IV. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF LAUGHTER.

Why do we smile when a child puts on a man's hat? or what induces us to laugh on reading that the corpulent Gibbon was unable to rise from his knees after making a tender declaration? The usual reply to such questions is, that laughter results from a perception of incongruity. Even were there not on this reply the obvious criticism that laughter often occurs from extreme pleasure or from mere vivacity, there would still remain the real problem--How comes a sense of the incongruous to be followed by these peculiar bodily actions? Some have alleged that laughter is due to the pleasure of a relative self-elevation, which we feel on seeing the humiliation of others. But this theory, whatever portion of truth it may contain, is, in the first place, open to the fatal objection, that there are various humiliations to others which produce in us anything but laughter; and, in the second place, it does not apply to the many instances in which no one's dignity is implicated: as when we laugh at a good pun.

Moreover, like the other, it is merely a generalization of certain conditions to laughter; and not an explanation of the odd movements which occur under these conditions. Why, when greatly delighted, or impressed with certain unexpected contrasts of ideas, should there be a contraction of particular facial muscles, and particular muscles of the chest and abdomen? Such answer to this question as may be possible, can be rendered only by physiology.