Scientific apparatus

“ 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 ”

“ In natural philosophy, chemistry and astronomy we need apparatus—not the costly instruments of precision, but plain, cheap pieces, that are fitted to illustrate and in some cases demonstrate the many and various principles that are taught. ”

“ A new scientific discovery, of the kind called theoretical, is like a mechanical discovery—that of the steam-engine, the telephone, the phonograph, or the aeroplane—a thing that is useful for something. ”

“ Hence, while Chemistry and Biology, even apart from the possibility of their conversion into branches of applied Mechanics, are essentially descriptive sciences, the task fulfilled by them, so far as they use qualitative and teleological categories, is one of æsthetic and historical rather than of properly scientific description. ”

“ The remarkable progress of technical science in the nineteenth century, which has stamped our age as "an age of machinery," is a direct consequence of the immense advance of theoretical science. All the privileges and comforts which modern life gives us are due to scientific discoveries, especially in physics and chemistry. ”

“ The topics comprise chiefly those great applications of mechanical engineering and arts, and of physical and chemical science, in which every intelligent person feels concerned; while some articles are devoted to certain purely scientific discoveries that have excited general interest. ”

“ The Education of the Senses is also greatly promoted by the practical pursuit of any science of experiment and observation, as chemistry or astronomy. The methods of manipulating, of which we have just spoken, in chemistry, and the methods of measuring extremely minute portions of space and time which are employed in astronomy, and which are described in the former part of this chapter, are among the best modes of educating the senses for purposes of scientific observation. ”

“ In fact, all truly great advances are thus derived from fundamental science, and the future progress of the world will be largely dependent upon the provision made for scientific research, especially in the fields of physics and chemistry, which underlie all branches of engineering. ”

“ These observations are commonplaces in the laboratory and in the department of research. They have filtered through to thinking people who begin to understand the part that experiment plays in all forms of scientific progress. There is a general agreement that if there is to be an increase in the knowledge that men possess regarding the mechanical forces, the only sure way of gaining this knowledge is to weigh, measure, describe and classify. ”

“ In a word, the general state of physical science, at the present moment, the vigour, activity, and sagacity with which researches in it are prosecuted in every civilized country, the increasing consideration in which scientific (p. 307) men are held, and the personal honours and rewards which begin to be conferred upon them, all justify the expectation that we are on the eve of mechanical discoveries still greater than any which have yet appeared ”

“ It is a general truth that the physical sciences of light and heat are based upon mechanical conditions of the particles of matter; that the science of chemistry is founded upon physics; that biological phenomena are dependent upon physical and chemical conditions; that psychological subjects are based upon biology; and that biological science cannot progress excepting in proportion to the advance of the sciences on which it is based. ”

“ The Study of the Biological and Physical Sciences.—The last century is marked by scientific development along several {466} rather distinct lines as follows: the study of the earth, or geology; animal and vegetable life, or biology; atomic analysis, or chemistry; biochemistry; physics, especially that part relating to electricity and radioactivity; and more recently it might be stated that investigations are carried on in psychology and sociology, while mathematics and astronomy have made progress. ”

“ Hence, if we remember that the ultimate object of all physical science is the successful formulation of such practical rules for action, we can see that it is a logical consequence of the character of the interests which dominate our scientific descriptions, that the physical sciences should adopt a rigidly mechanical view of the physical order. ”

“ But it is also true that the scientific research activities in other branches,359 like biology, which are not closely connected with the electromagnetic theory and its applications, have also blossomed up with wonderful rapidity during the last twenty-five years. ”

“ Instances might be given proving how, in Science, an advance of one division presently advances other divisions—how Astronomy has been immensely forwarded by discoveries in Optics, while other optical discoveries have initiated Microscopic Anatomy, and greatly aided the growth of Physiology—how Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowledge of Electricity, Magnetism, Biology, Geology—how Electricity has reacted on Chemistry and Magnetism, and has developed our views of Light and Heat. ”

“ Living organisms possess many unique processes and systems which are complex and poorly understood. The new theoretical approaches, combined with laboratory studies, are expected to result in advances which will expand both our scientific and technological horizons. ”

“ These facts are then co-ordinated into a consistent whole, general relations or laws are established, and in this way we obtain various groupings of phenomena, such as electricity, magnetism, optics, mechanics, chemistry, biology, etc. In certain cases it may be impossible to get beyond the initial stage; though experimental data are accumulated, the co-ordination of facts and the discovery of general relations and laws may defy analysis. In such cases we can scarcely regard our knowledge as constituting a science. ”

“ In most of the sciences this deeper exercise of scientific thought requires for its successful pursuit artificial aids to the common senses of observation. Chemistry must have its purified acids and reagents, test tubes, and delicate scales for measurement of weight and volume. ”

“ From time to time men of eminence, and fully competent, by their knowledge of biological phenomena, and their skill and accuracy in conducting scientific investigation, have made the most patient and careful examination of the evidence placed before them by the professed believers and practitioners of so-called magnetic, phreno-magnetic, electro-biological, and spiritualistic phenomena ”

“ We recognise this when we divide science into that which is experimental, or depends on apparatus, and that which is observational and classificatory—distinctions these which relate not so much to the objects of science as to our methods of pursuing them. ”

“ A scientific classification, on the other hand, aims at the utmost comprehensiveness, ransacking the whole world from the depths of the earth to the remotest star for new objects, and scrutinising everything with the aid of crucible and dissecting knife, microscope and spectroscope, to find the qualities and constitution of everything, in order that it may be classed among those things with which it has most in common and distinguished from those other things from which it differs. ”

“ You are in the prime of life, in the beginning of your career, and you have powers and acquirements capable of illustrating and extending every branch of physical enquiry; and, in the field of science, how many are the spots not yet cultivated! Where the laws of sensible become connected with those of insensible motions, the mechanical with the chemical phenomena, how little is known! In electricity, magnetism, in the relations of crystallized forms to the weight of the elements of bodies, what a number of curious and important objects of research! ”

“ For in the scientific hierarchy each science, in addition to the forces and phenomena of the lower sciences, deals with a new force and a new group of phenomena, and therefore with new doctrines and new methods. In going up the scale of sciences we rise successively to a higher and higher plane of activity. On the plane of dead matter only physical and chemical forces operate, and only physical and chemical phenomena occur. On the plane of living matter, in addition to the preceding, we have also vital forces and phenomena. ”

“ These reasoners never looked for any powers of a higher order than the cohesion, the resistance, the gravity, the attraction, which operate in inert matter. If the chemical school assimilated the physician to a vintner or brewer, the mechanical physiologists made him an hydraulic engineer; and, in fact, several of the iatromathematicians were at the same time teachers of engineering and of medicine. ”

“ The astronomer, the electrician, the chemist, the mineralogist, the botanist, are constantly called upon to perform manual operations of exceeding delicacy. The progress of all branches of physical science depends upon observation, or on that artificial observation which is termed experiment, of one kind or another; and, the farther we advance, the more practical difficulties surround the investigation of the conditions of the problems offered to us; so that mobile and yet steady hands, guided by clear vision, are more and more in request in the workshops of science. ”

“ The various branches of physical science differ in the extent to which at any given moment of their history, observation on the one hand, or ratiocination on the other, is their more obvious feature, but in no other way, and nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third. ”

“ There was then no occasion for those delicate instruments of precision which are now found in every physical laboratory by means of which the man of science is able to investigate phenomena and determine laws that were quite unknown until a few years ago. ”

“ It has required three centuries of scientific thought and of subtle inventions for its promotion to enable a modern chemist or physicist to center his attention on electrons and their relation to the mysterious nucleus of the atom, or to permit an embryologist to study the early stirrings of the fertilized egg. ”

“ Physical science is one and indivisible. Although, for practical purposes, it is convenient to mark it out into the primary regions of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, and to subdivide these into subordinate provinces, yet the method of investigation and the ultimate object of the physical inquirer are everywhere the same. ”

“ But our usual scientific custom of interpreting hidden molecular events after the analogy of visible massive ones enables us to frame easily an abstract and general scheme of processes which the physical changes in question may be like. And when once the possibility of some kind of mechanical interpretation is established, Mechanical Science, in her present mood, will not hesitate to set her brand of ownership upon the matter, feeling sure that it is only a question of time when the exact mechanical explanation of the case shall be found out. ”

“ Scientists were now furnished with the telescope, compass, sextant, microscope, barometer, thermometer, air pump, manometer, and other instruments so that cellular structures of plants, animals, and insects, the microbes and bacteria, the animalculæ found in water and in the sea, as well as the phenomena of the air, sky, and earth crust could now be studied by trained observers. The invention of these instruments caused workers to specialize more and more, and completely severed science from philosophy, of which it had been an appendage since the earliest times. ”

“ They are fortunate who get as far as a sympathetic appreciation of the methods which give pattern to the complicated apparatus: methods of analytic, experimental observation, mathematical formulation and deduction, constant and elaborate check and test. For most persons, the reality of the apparatus is found only in its embodiments in practical affairs, in mechanical devices and in techniques which touch life as it is lived. ”

“ The same distinction could very easily be shown to be the foundation of every other science. All the physical sciences have this in common, that they are researches into what is real as distinguished from what is apparent, that is, from what lies exposed and obvious on the very surface of things. ”

“ In the cultivation of the powers of observation, the study of physics stands preeminent; and in the physical laboratory the student has an immense advantage, for in many cases it is within his power to produce by experiment, and on a small scale and under favorable conditions, the same appearances that he observes in Nature. ”

“ Yes, science to-day, at the close of this nineteenth century, in the laboratory is discovering and scientifically demonstrating the great, immutable laws upon which the inspired and illuminated ones of all ages have based all their teachings, those who by ordering their lives according to the higher laws of their being get in a moment of time, through the direct touch of inspiration, what it takes the physical investigator a whole lifetime or a series of investigators a series of lifetimes to discover and demonstrate. ”

“ In their numerous writings on mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, it is interesting to remark that the solution of a problem is always obtained by performing an experiment, or by an instrumental observation. ”