Scientific society

“ The Council are of opinion that this Society would be omitting a principal means of the advancement of Science—the end for which all such associations exist—if it neglected the question of the Endowment of Research. To maintain a successful investigator in his labours, even though no results of immediate or obvious utility can be shown to spring out of them, is of interest to the community at large. ”

“ By means of uniform credentials—and very often a contribution of work is preferred—the scientific society opens its museums, its gardens, its library, its laboratories, and its annual conversaziones to each of its members, whether he be a Darwin, or a simple amateur. ”

“ Proof of this is that it is coming to be more and more the fact that great scientific discoveries are made simultaneously by a number of independent investigators—an indication that society creates in several places the individual conditions requisite for such discoveries. ”

“ These last aims may be less spiritual, lower on your arbitrary intellectual scale, if you please, than the first; but they are none the less legitimate aims which society demands of educated men: and all we claim is that the astronomers, the physicists, the chemists, the biologists, the physicians, and the engineers, who have shown that they are able to answer these demands of society, should be intrusted with the training of those who are to follow them in the same work. ”

“ It is in some measure to be attributed to the defects of our system of education, that scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussions in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact, which, if I had consulted the extremely limited nature of my personal experience, I should, perhaps, have doubted. ”

“ The foundation of the Royal Institution at the end of the eighteenth century marks, perhaps, the point at which the importance of physical science began to impress the popular imagination. But great thinkers had long recognised the necessity of applying scientific method in the sphere of social and political investigation. ”

“ On the other hand, there is a small but ever-increasing number of scientists, who push on through the world of form with which the mathematical sciences deal, onwards through the world of matter with which the physical sciences deal, and thence through the world of organic life with which the biological sciences deal, and finally attempt to explore in a scientific spirit and with scientific methods the world of mind and society with which the psychological and social sciences deal. ”

“ But society as the subject matter for scientific study and treatment has hardly more than crossed the threshold of the laboratory. Sir Francis Galton's imperfect application of theories of heredity to government is still the best contribution made by science to the subject. ”

“ Prominent attention has been also devoted to those various sciences which help to a better understanding of the nature of man, to the bearings of science upon the questions of society and government, to scientific education, and to the conflicts which spring from the progressive nature of scientific knowledge. ”

“ The greatest obstacle to the discovery of new knowledge in this country, lies in a wide spread ignorance of the dependence of human welfare upon scientific research. I propose therefore to show in a brief manner, that the essential starting-point of human progress, lies in scientific discovery ”

“ In our universities and centers of learning he will find the exponents of the science still discussing whether it can ever have any laws, and even whether it should be founded on fact or romance. Let him take down any volume of history from its shelf, and endeavor to find any scientific clue therein to the natural laws underlying and controlling the majestic process of life which has unfolded itself in our western civilization, or to the natural laws that have directed the development of other social systems contemporaneous with it, or anterior to it. ”

“ Given unity of purpose throughout the world, given a surcease of mutual thwarting and destruction, do we realize what science has made possible now and here for mankind 1
I shall not indulge in any imaginative anticipations of things still undiscovered in the scientific realm, I will only suppose that things already known and tested are systematically used all over the world, that the good knowledge we have already stored in our laboratories and libraries is really applied with some thoroughness and with some community of purpose to the needs and enlargement of life. ”

“ And yet, as it seems to me, the greatest value of this institution as an educational factor in science—as a biological lever of progress—does not depend so much upon the tangible revelations of fact that have come out of its laboratories as upon other of its influences. Scientific ideas, like all other forms of human thought, move more or less in shoals. ”

“ For this reason, if on no higher ground, we have claimed that it is both the interest and the duty of the State to foster and reward scientific investigation. The time is not far distant, if it is not already at hand, when the scientific culture of a people will be one of the chief factors in determining its position among the nations of the world. ”

“ Its objects are:—To give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry—to promote the intercourse of those, who cultivate science in different parts of the British Empire, with one another and with foreign philosophers—to obtain a more general attention to the objects of science, and a removal of any disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progress. ”

“ Secondly, it is vital that public sentiment should be educated to the point of providing the legal machinery whereby some proportion, no matter how small, of the wealth which science pours into the lap of the community, shall return automatically to the support and expansion of scientific research. ”

“ It has fallen out that, by turning its thoughts toward becoming a science, politics, like political economy, has joined its literature to those books of natural science which boast a brief authority, and then make way for what is ‘latest.’ Unless it be of the constitution of those rare books which mark an epoch in scientific thought, a ‘scientific work’ may not expect to outlive the prevailing fashion in ladies’ wraps. ”

“ By bringing together men who are engaged in the various fields of science indicated by our several sections, by promoting friendship between them, by giving opportunity for discussion on points of difference, by encouraging obscure but genuine laborers with the applause of the leaders whom they have learned to venerate, and by fostering that feeling of respect for other branches of science, that knowledge of and interest in their progress, which chiefly mark the liberality of scientific study. ”

“ The mere collection of data, however multiplied in detail, however abstruse the subjects to which they may refer, does not of itself deserve the name of science. The term properly applies only when phenomena are placed in causal relation, and the laws which govern their development are traced. Measured by this standard, every attempt to explain the growth of human thought and institutions, and to elucidate the laws which have acted in the process of their evolution, has a just claim to be classed under the head of scientific inquiry. ”

“ But at any rate they do for science that which nations can do, and individuals cannot; and they seek for scientific truths in a manner suitable to the respect now professed for science and to the progress which its methods have made. ”

“ Scientists start from hunches, examine available data, advance tentative conclusions, test them in the light of wider observations, and round out their research by formulating general principles or "laws." This scientific approach has been used in many fields of observation and study. I am applying the formula to one aspect of social history: the appearance, development, maturity, decline and disappearance of the vast co-ordinations of collective, experimental human effort called civilizations. ”

“ But most or all of these reasons have been seen to be of a kind which hold out a good promise for the future, and thereby afford an ample encouragement to the use of a strictly logical method in political investigations, and to the attempt to create a scientific structure of ever-increasing completeness in this region, as well as in others more familiarly associated with the name of Science. ”

“ But scientific subject matter is organized with specific reference to the successful conduct of the enterprise of discovery, to knowing as a specialized undertaking. Reference to the kind of assurance attending science will shed light upon this statement. It is rational assurance,—logical warranty. The ideal of scientific organization is, therefore, that every conception and statement shall be of such a kind as to follow from others and to lead to others. ”

“ In the subjects of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemistry, vegetable and animal physiology, psychology and morality, and the more concrete subjects depending upon them, such as politics, trade, commerce, government, &c., our ideas have equally advanced, in consequence of scientific research; and to fully describe the mental progress resulting from discovery in nearly all branches of human knowledge would require a series of books to be written on the History of all the Sciences. ”

“ This is why the empiricism and pragmatism of science are vital, and why when scientific results affect us all, and speak against powerful political and financial interests, the openness and rigour of the process become ever more important. ”

“ Outside these three classes of inquiries, the Government ought to keep its hands off, and leave scientific experiment and inquiry to the free competition of those bright, intelligent men whose genius leads them into the fields of research. ”

“ Science and scientific research and discoveries are the international agencies by which the riddles and miracles of the universe, in all their magnitude, are solved and explained. Institutions of learning, schools and universities are linked together by the uniformity of fundamental laws governing science and the dissemination of knowledge and discoveries. ”

“ It is the aim of the authors of these essays to present the results of experience in scientific investigation, to illustrate by concrete examples the sources of progress in a few departments of knowledge and so make clear to the layman the position of research as a factor in national prosperity. ”

“ Meanwhile, new sciences spring up, and old sciences take new shape, and, as a matter of fact, so large has become the scientific domain, that no one man can master it. Division of labour has become as necessary here as in the manual crafts. ”

“ So far has scientific discovery, and its practical applications to human benefit by invention, now progressed, that every one considers this to be, par excellence, the scientific age. And as discovery and invention continue to progress with accelerated speed, we are encouraged to hope, not only that scientific principles will ultimately be universally recognised as the regulators of all technical industry, but also as a fundamental basis of morality. ”

“ Its truths, if applied at all, must be mainly applied by those who desire its benefits; or every one must apply the science for himself or herself, else nearly all the knowledge there may be on the subject will be as if it were not. Here we have plainly before the mind the great and peculiarly weak point, so far as the practical benefits are concerned, which this science may be capable of conferring. To make it profitable and useful, or, in other words, to make it an applied science in a community, that community must be made, one and all, experts in its knowledge and in its applications. ”

“ While such teaching organizations, and their results in the shape of enlightenment, are due to these spontaneous agencies, to such agencies also are due the great improvements in the quality of the culture now happily beginning to take place. The spread of scientific knowledge, and of the scientific spirit, has not been brought about by laws and officials. Our scientific societies have arisen from the spontaneous coöperation of those interested in the accumulation and diffusion of the kinds of truth they respectively deal with. ”

“ The conditions of human progress can be wrought into a science only by pursuing the same course that raises into a science any branch of knowledge; that is, by collecting, classifying, and comparing facts, and therefrom discovering laws. Society must be studied as chemistry is studied ”

“ With a science taking as its subject, not the investigation of how people should live, but of what exists, and therefore occupied chiefly in investigating inanimate objects, and meanwhile leaving the organization of human society as it is,—with such science no improvements, no victories over nature, can improve the condition of men. ”

“ These investigations show the extent to which the new science has borrowed from the old and the extent to which a new structure has been erected which has a right to claim an independent name and rank among the social sciences. ”

“ Immediately a discovery is effected it is made public, and is afterwards incorporated in the ordinary text books of science, ready for the use of inventors; and in this way such books have become filled with valuable knowledge acquired by researches in past times. All this knowledge (which has cost millions of pounds and a vast amount of intellect and labour) has been given by its discoverers freely to the nation. ”