Lawrence Joseph Henderson

“ Leonardo da Vinci, most versatile of all men, had, to be sure, successfully sought the solution of problems in mechanics, and patiently studied anatomy and, in truth, almost every department of science. But, great as was his insight into the phenomena of matter and motion, and it was perhaps not less than his insight into the fine arts, his work remained without effect, because unknown. ”

“ Since the year 1687, when it was published, the labor of many men of great genius has only availed to polish, to refine, and to embellish a subject which they could not really extend. In the course of the studies leading up to this work, Newton, incidentally as it were, invented the differential and integral calculus, which became the source not only of countless achievements in mathematics and science, but of perhaps the bitterest controversy in the annals of learning. ”

“ On the other hand, it cannot be denied that if the science of antiquity at its best, in the mechanics of Archimedes, the descriptive astronomy of Hipparchus, the geometry of Euclid, and the zoology of Aristotle, did manifest most of the characteristics of method and treatment which we know to-day, nearly all of the results of modern science, the modifications of life and civilization, are lacking in antiquity. Ancient science was in great part sterile; modern science is now the principal agent in social evolution. ”

“ NATURAL science is the latest of man's great achievements. The other important agents of civilization long ago attained their full stature, and many of the finest products of human endeavor, like literature and the fine arts, have been through many centuries the common possession of the race. Even music, the most modern of the arts, is no longer young. But only in the last half century has science reached maturity and revealed its titanic power for good and evil in the reconstruction of the surroundings of our life. ”

“ Descartes was philosopher, scientist, and mathematician; some of the great men of the eighteenth century were hardly less so. Even through a large part of the nineteenth century many of the greater men ranged widely over the field of science and mathematics. To-day the force of circumstances has largely changed all that. The chemist is likely to look upon the physicist, or even the physical chemist, with suspicion on account of his mathematical interests. On the other hand, the mathematician, unlike Newton, Euler, and Gauss, is commonly no longer a physicist at all. ”

“ Before Galileo there are but two modern men of science whose importance is capital, Copernicus and Vesalius. The work of Copernicus, [4] though destined finally to tear a veil from before the eyes of men, did not amount to a proof of the heliocentric hypothesis, nor was it at once profoundly influential upon thought. As for Vesalius, he labored upon human anatomy, a subject which has never exerted a wide influence upon the large affairs of civilization. The number of men who, in the sixteenth century and even before, pursued natural science with industry was considerable. ”

“ One achievement of the century could not be foreseen—the creation of scientific chemistry by Lavoisier, aided by Scheele, Priestley and others, a deed hardly second to that of Newton and Galileo in its importance of science and civilization, and far the most important scientific advance of a hundred years. ”

“ The great result of seventeenth-century science was to show the world that simple and exact laws of nature can be discovered. At the time of their discovery the most important thing about Galileo's law of falling bodies and Newton's "Principia" was their amazing novelty. Familiarity with such results of science has bred the modern contempt for superstition and anti-intellectual views concerning the phenomena of nature. ”

“ This is but one of the merits of Michael Faraday, whom many have thought the very greatest of scientific experimenters, and who was certainly one of the noblest and most inspired of men. The work of Faraday is of a richness and variety that baffles description. He was interested in every department of physical science, and he was a great discoverer wherever his interests rested. ”

“ The history of science and of its influence on civilization is in some respects the simplest of the departments of history, for it is less complicated by those incalculable forces which, springing from man's passions and personal interests, make up much of the charm and difficulty of general history. Deprived of these psychological elements, the history of science is in fact more nearly a part of the natural history of man ”

“ Finally, the change in the relation of science to civilization, accomplished in the nineteenth century, marks a new epoch in history. For the first time humanity has systematically undertaken the task of conquering the environment. A new organ of the social body, like the financial or the military, has been created and has assumed relations with the other parts of the great organism of modern society. ”

“ To this slender store the earliest of the Greek philosophers contributed new discoveries, but before long the genius and power of the Greek mind led to overweening confidence in speculation unaided by observation and experiment, and, as a result, the great period of Athens is not scientifically of the highest importance. Aristotle, to be sure, and his pupil Theophrastus, contributed very greatly to sound knowledge of animals, plants, and rocks, but in the theoretical sciences vague ideas based upon words rather than phenomena or clear and precise concepts led them astray. ”

“ But there can be no doubt that even in antiquity common sense sometimes felt itself more or less in opposition to such an idea, and it was natural enough for the men of the seventeenth century, when stirred by the new spirit of scientific research, to seek to solve a problem which has always been of the highest interest, and never far from the minds of thoughtful naturalists. ”

“ Clearly the early advances of practical knowledge are not to be confounded with natural science. They belong to the period of human development which is the concern of the anthropologist, and they only concern us as they help to an understanding of what science really is. ”

“ Many will always regard this as the final expression of man's wonder and admiration at that which man has done in winning his civilization. But while we admire and marvel at the feats of primitive man, we must not forget to distinguish a very important difference between such and many achievements of civilized man—in fact, between prehistoric works and deeds and all the greatest scientific achievements. ”

“ At length the chemical processes of life upon the earth were unified. Living things were seen to make up a single community, the great laboratory through which alone matter flows in its everlasting cycle.
The results of Pasteur's discoveries and of the methods of investigation which he introduced are probably already greater than the results of Napoleon's life. The simple great man, who almost alone among the scientists of the nineteenth century equals the genius and virtue of Faraday, shares with the latter the first position among those who have revolutionized our twentieth-century world. ”

“ It must be confessed, however, that the immediate results of man's new-found confidence in the intellect were often very unfortunate. For there can be little doubt that it was the successes of the Newtonian dynamics and of mathematical analysis which gave the philosophers of the eighteenth century their assurance of the possibility of like simple, exhaustive, accurate, positive, and wholly satisfactory treatments of the most complex of human affairs, including economics and politics, to say nothing of the biological sciences. ”

“ System replaces chance in the greater part of human affairs, manufacturing, warfare, medicine, commerce itself, have become "scientific"; they advance steadily, ruthlessly, and carry man with them; whither he cannot guess. ”

“ Later, when Alexandria became the center of the Greek world, and the limitations of metaphysics had become somewhat more evident, there was a return to positive science. For nearly a thousand years men, notably Aristarchus, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Euclid, Hero, and Ptolemy, labored at Alexandria, employing the true methods of science and collecting valuable stores of information in astronomy, geometry, trigonometry, optics, heat, and even anatomy. ”

“ Very wonderful as the early progress was,—think of civilized man's failure to domesticate animals, and, incomparably important, think of the winning of fire,—it lacked a certain germ of growth, which is familiar to us in our own times. ”

“ Lavoisier had provided the instruments and methods for a revolution in chemistry quite as great as Newton's in physics. But chemistry differs very greatly from physics in the applicability of mathematics, and a vast experimental edifice had to be raised before, toward the end of the nineteenth century, anything like the completeness of the Newtonian mechanics could be attained in the younger science. ”

“ Heraclius's doctrine how bodies are resolved into the indifferent nature of fire, and remolded into solids; have all of them some taste of the natural philosopher—some savor of the nature of things, and experience, and bodies; whereas, in the physics of Aristotle you hear hardly anything but the words of logic ”

“ The work of Newton in establishing the science of mechanics was dependent upon a variety of other achievements of the century, in addition to the directly contributory labors of Kepler and Galileo. Especially important were the earlier progress of mathematics, marked by the invention of logarithms by Napier and independently by Bürgi, and the above mentioned discovery of analytical geometry by Descartes. Newton's work was also dependent upon the growing power and precision of scientific instruments and measurements. ”

“ But natural history lacked the great foundation of accurate descriptive knowledge, arranged in order, that astronomy possessed, and, as a result much of the great work which the biological renaissance began was interrupted for a century. ”

“ In the year 1859 biology yielded to the unifying idea of Charles Darwin. Many had previously suspected that all living things are blood relations; the discoveries of embryologists in particular had proved that the similarities among living things are far more profound than had been formerly realized. But Darwin provided a plausible explanation of the development of more complex beings by a continuous evolutionary process, and this led to the world's final decision in favor of the hypothesis of transformation. ”

“ Up to the present time, the mathematicians who have rejected Faraday's method of stating his law as unworthy of the precision of their science have never succeeded in devising any essentially different formula which shall fully express the phenomena without introducing hypotheses about the mutual action of things which have no physical existence, such as elements of currents which flow out of nothing, then along a wire, and finally sink into nothing again. ”

“ The chemical aspects of fermentation [4] have a special historical importance because they are especially associated with Pasteur's discoveries. Trained as a chemist, he applied the exact methods of physical science to the biological problem, and solved what had been thought by many insoluble. The studies of Pasteur convinced the scientific world that life as we know it never originates spontaneously, that minute living organisms—microbes, germs, bacteria—are far more active agents in this world than had been guessed. ”

“ Our lives are mainly occupied with the material world, with production and distribution of food and clothing, and the construction of dwellings which shall adequately protect us from the cold, the wind, and the rain. All higher human activities rest upon the successful establishment of these as a foundation. Hence progress, as the word is commonly understood, is most often a step in the control of the environment to the end of better production, construction, and distribution of some commodity. ”

“ The number of working scientists, if not their quality, has enormously increased. An army has been organized and disciplined, and an amount of work which can scarcely be imagined has been produced. Scientific literature has now become a flood that has to be canalized with the help of special journals of various descriptions devoted solely to its review, description, and orderly classification, in order that it may be utilized at all. ”

“ One of the principal results of the extension of science is its incorporation with the state. Astronomers royal have existed for three centuries, but to-day we have Departments of Agriculture with many scientific bureaus, and we badly need Departments of Public Health. Moreover, the vast increase of knowledge of a highly technical character has made it impossible for the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of government even to have an intelligent opinion regarding much with which they must deal. ”

“ The Romans, practical men—according to Disraeli's definition, those who practice the errors of their forefathers—did little to advance the sciences, and, when the dark ages extinguished all intellectual endeavor, it was little enough that men had achieved in science, compared with their other deeds. ”

“ Not only is oxygen the most active of chemical elements, if both intensity and variety of chemical behavior be considered, and far the commonest upon the earth's surface, but also the most important chemical processes are reactions of oxygen. ”

“ There are to-day very few men who possess even a superficial acquaintance with all the principal departments of science, and between the work of the astronomer, on the one hand, and that of the anatomist, on the other, there is perhaps no closer relationship than the fact that both employ optical instruments in their researches. ”

“ Such organisms turned out to be the essential factors in fermentation of all kinds, save only those due to digestive ferments; it is such organisms which form alcohol, sour milk, make vinegar, etc. Thus in the organic cycle the rôle of the organisms formed of a single cell at length appeared to be a great one. Everywhere present, borne by the wind, they are the true scavengers; for nothing, no matter how small, can escape them. But they are more than this. Wherever they find organic matter, dead or alive, that can support life, they seize upon it ”