Discoverer

“ In the last instance, we opine, the scientific discoverer, too, creates something new, namely, a piece of knowledge that was previously not in existence. And we obey the impulse of hero-worship, when we call a definite first discoverer a creator. ”

“ Whatever we dwell upon has its "tuning" effect upon our thoughts, and thus we reach some of the lore and wisdom of those who have trodden the way before us. The inventor and the discoverer are truly what the words imply: the inventor "comes upon" the new idea or principle, and the discoverer "uncovers" and makes plain. ”

“ We may readily conceive the satisfaction and delight with which, after this perplexity and struggle, the discoverer finds himself in light and tranquillity; able to look at the province of nature which has been the subject of his study, and to read there an intelligible connexion, a sufficing reason, which no one before him had understood or apprehended. ”

“ It is equally clear that scientific discovery, which, though it may flash suddenly upon the mind of the discoverer, is always the result of long brooding over the most patient observations, must come at its own moments, and cannot be commanded. ”

“ Every schoolboy knows that many of the most valuable discoveries in science and art were accidental, or a kind of necessity, and sprang from causes that had no place in the forethought of the discoverer. ”

“ In discovery we search for new phenomena, their causes and relations; in invention we seek to produce new effects, or to produce known effects in an improved manner. The objects of the scientific discoverer are, new truth and greater accuracy; whereas those of the inventor, are increased usefulness and economy of results. The ancients classed inventors with the gods, because they considered them great benefactors to the human race. Discoverers may properly be viewed as priests and prophets of truth, because they both reveal new knowledge to mankind, and predict with certainty coming events. ”

“ In this, as in other considerable advances in real science, the complete disclosure of the new truths by the principal discoverer, was preceded by movements and glimpses, by trials, seekings, and guesses on the part of others; by indications, in short, that men’s minds were already carried by their intellectual impulses in the direction in which the truth lay, and were beginning to detect its nature. In a case so important and interesting as this, it is more peculiarly proper to give some view of this Prelude to the Epoch of the full discovery. ”

“ It is in the intermediate period that the opportunity is offered of extended research into the records of science, of confirming or correcting the results of reading and study by observation, of making original investigations into the worlds of matter and of thought, and thus bringing forth to the light truths which may benefit mankind, and at the same time serve as the basis of honor and success to their discoverer. ”

“ The discoverer and the poet are inventors; and they are so because their mental vision detects the unapparent, unsuspected facts, almost as vividly as ocular vision rests on the apparent and familiar. ”

“ Thus it comes to pass that, in the refined investigations of the present day, genius united to extensive knowledge, cultivated powers, and indomitable industry, constitute the characteristics of the successful discoverer. ”

“ We are precluded from questioning Galilei personally about the foundations of Mechanics, or Columbus about the inner feelings of a navigator who discovers new lands, or Sebastian Bach about the merits of Counterpoint, but a great discoverer lives among our contemporaries who is to give us a clue to the nature of discovery. ”

“ Attempt by help of the old philosophy, the discoverer not being in possession of modern knowledge. A poor schoolmaster, in rags, introduced himself to a scientific friend with whom I was talking, and announced that he had found out the composition of the sun. ”

“ But though an inflation of values which should be beneficent might follow the discovery and working of the Morning mine, clearly the first thing for the discoverer to do was to take effectual measures to conceal from human knowledge the extent of his discovery. ”

“ Without the slightest intellectual strain it puts the children through that normal sequence of orderly attention to classification and detail, interspersed with nodal points of synthesis, which may be called the very breathing-rhythm of the scientific discoverer. ”

“ And the names of the philosophers, whose high office it has been to detect such laws, are even yet far from numerous. In looking back at the path by which science has advanced to its present position, we see the names of the great discoverers shine out like luminaries, few and scattered along the line: by far the largest portion of the space is occupied by those whose comparatively humble office it was to verify, to develope, to apply the general truths which the discoverers brought to light. ”

“ Now we have further to remark, that in the progress of human knowledge respecting any branch of speculation, there may be several such steps in succession, each depending upon and including the preceding. 50 The theoretical views which one generation of discoverers establishes, become the facts from which the next generation advances to new theories. ”

“ Your discovery may be, for that matter, renewed every week; the only essential is the good luck—which a fair amount of practice has taught you to count upon-of not finding, for the particular occasion, other discoverers in the field. ”

“ In another work,122 I endeavored to show that those who have been discoverers in science have generally had minds, the disposition of which was to believe in an intelligent Maker of the universe; and that the scientific speculations which produced an opposite tendency, were generally those which, though they might deal familiarly with known physical truths, and conjecture boldly with regard to the unknown, did not add to the number of solid generalizations. ”

“ Accordingly, as we have already noticed, great discoverers have often invented hypotheses which would not answer to all the facts, as well as those which would; and have fancied themselves to have discovered laws, which a more careful examination of the facts overturned. ”

“ In this way a scientific theory, when once established, is perpetually finding new applications in the phenomena of nature; and those who make such applications, though, as we have said, they care not to be ranked with the great discoverers who establish theories new and true, often receive a more prompt and general applause than great discoverers do ”

“ The answer which the man of science returns to this question, as to what is the use of his discovery, is, ‘I only tell you what is the interest of that discovery, that interest which compels and impels me to go on in the path of investigation.’ It is knowledge, mere knowledge of the facts and laws of nature, that the scientific mind seeks to gain. ”

“ One finds wrapped within it the mystery, aspiration, and spiritual passion of the soul.
Science, no longer a dry assembling of facts and figures, is an increasing revelation of the imagination, the exactness, the thoroughness, and the great progressive plans of God. Evolution has become a spiritual formula. The scientist looks out over the earth and sky and sun and star. Against his little years are meted out vast prehistoric spans; against his mastery of a few forms of life, stands Life itself. ”

“ In the light of a new discovery, we are apt to wonder why our fathers were so blind as not to see it. When a new invention has been made, we ask ourselves, Why was it not thought of before? The discovery seems obvious, and the invention simple, after we know them. ”

“ But if any one attempt to give himself up to things, and to discover something new; yet he will only propose and destine for his object the investigation and discovery of some one invention, and nothing more; as the nature of the magnet, the tides, the heavenly system, and the like, which appear enveloped in some degree of mystery, and have hitherto been treated with but little success. Now it is the greatest proof of want of skill, to investigate the nature of any object in itself alone ”

“ His pupil writes in the same spirit and to the same end:—"A discovery, by means of reflection and mental experiment, of the limits of knowledge, is the highest and most universally applicable discovery of all; it is the one through which our intellectual life most strikingly blends with the moral and practical part of human nature. ”

“ To him, a discovery amounts to something more than its mere self, and is valuable, like a choice seed, largely for what it may become. He ranges facts into series, gives each series its proper place in a science, clusters the sciences into groups, and, studying these groups with reference to each other, and to the grand problems with which thought is always busied, seeks to arrive at higher conceptions of the universe, and of the essential unity of all material things. ”

“ Discovery is not invention.—Edison.
Science has been compared to a stately and wide-spreading tree, stretching outward and upward its ever-growing boughs. As yet mankind has reached only to its lowermost branches, too often satisfied with the dead calyxes which have fallen from it to the ground, after serving their uses for the protection of the vital germs of truth. The seed of the next advance in science can only germinate as the dry husk decays, within which its potentiality was secretly developed. ”

“ A new principle of research was everywhere acknowledged, a new method was created, and science, natural and historical, entered upon that astonishing career of discovery whose rich promise for the future we have but begun to anticipate. ”

“ Who shall assign a limit to the discoveries of future ages? Who shall prescribe to science her boundaries, or restrain the active and insatiable curiosity of man within the circle of his present acquirements? We may guess with plausibility what we cannot anticipate with confidence. The day may yet be coming when our instruments of observation shall be inconceivably more powerful. They may ascertain still more decisive points of resemblance. They may resolve the same question by the evidence of sense which is now so abundantly convincing by the evidence of analogy. ”

“ It may be a task, not hopeless, to extract from the past progress of science the elements of an effectual and substantial method of Scientific Discovery. The advances which have, during the last three centuries, been made in the physical sciences;—in Astronomy, in Physics, in Chemistry, in Natural History, in Physiology;—these are allowed by all to be real, to be great, to be striking ”

“ A great principle, like that which we are about to explain to the reader, is too vast in its bearings for its discovery and elaboration to have been the work of an individual. This truth, and indeed the whole of our knowledge, is but the result of the development and growth of pre-existing knowledge. In fact, every discovery, however brilliant—every invention, however ingenious, is but the expansion or improvement of an antecedent discovery or invention. ”

“ My success in your cause must be attributed to my having followed the path of experiment and induction discovered by philosophers who have preceded me: willingly would I divide your plaudits with other men of science, and claim much for the general glory of scientific discovery in a long course of ages. ”

“ Again, in other of your classes, in Chemistry, in Astronomy, in Natural History, besides acquiring groups of facts, the student has a glimpse of the method by which they were discovered, of the type of inference to which the discovery conforms, so that [Pg 20] the discovery of a new comet, the detection of a new species, the invention of a new chemical compound, each becomes a lesson of the most beautiful and impressive kind in the art of reasoning. ”

“ But such ephemeral discoveries are simply indicative of an unhappily general tendency among modern scientists—that of hastening to announce discoveries, and to attach one's name to something new, before the supposed discovery has been submitted to the test of searching experiment. ”

“ Everything that we call Invention, discovery in the higher sense, is the ultimate outcome of the original perception of some truth, which, long perfected in quiet, leads at length suddenly and unexpectedly to productive recognition. ”

“ Much is Still to be Discovered.
“To many,” says Sir Michael Foster, Professor of Physiology at Cambridge, “scientific knowledge seems to be advancing by leaps and bounds; every day brings its fresh discovery, opening up strange views, turning old ideas upside down. ”

“ For an Art of Discovery is not possible. At each step of the investigation are needed Invention, Sagacity, Genius,—elements which no art can give. We may hope in vain, as Bacon hoped, for an Organ which shall enable all men to construct Scientific Truths, as a pair of compasses enables all men to construct exact circles2. This cannot be. The practical results of the Philosophy of Science must be rather classification and analysis of what has been done, than precept and method for future doing. ”

“ Nature had been interrogated repeatedly with an invariably negative result; her secret, if she possessed one, seemed to be impenetrable and destined to remain for ever unknown. No discovery in science had opened up the vista of a path which led through inexhaustible fields of knowledge. ”

“ The explanation may be suggested by the doctrine which he applied in his most valuable works. A scientific inquirer must accumulate knowledge of facts, for the whole fabric of science is based upon experience. But he must also be always speculating, co-ordinating, and combining his experience; his mind must be incessantly suggesting the theories till he hits upon the one clue that leads through the chaotic labyrinth which experience presents to puzzle us. ”