The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century

The Advance of Science in the
Last
by T.H. (Thomas Henry)
Huxley

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Title: The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century
Author: T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
Release Date: March 4, 2005 [EBook #15253]
Language: English
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THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE IN THE LAST HALF-CENTURY
BY
T.H. HUXLEY, F.R.S.
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1889

THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE IN THE LAST HALF-CENTURY
[Sidenote: Recent industrial progress]
The most obvious and the most distinctive features of the History of
Civilisation, during the last fifty years, is the wonderful increase of
industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement
of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, accompanied
by an even more remarkable development of old and new means of
locomotion and intercommunication. By this rapid and vast
multiplication of the commodities and conveniences of existence, the
general standard of comfort has been raised, the ravages of pestilence
and famine have been checked, and the natural obstacles, which time
and space offer to mutual intercourse, have been reduced in a manner,
and to an extent, unknown to former ages. The diminution or removal
of local ignorance and prejudice, the creation of common interests
among the most widely separated peoples, and the strengthening of the
forces of the organisation of the commonwealth against those of
political or social anarchy, thus effected, have exerted an influence on
the present and future fortunes of mankind the full significance of
which may be divined, but cannot, as yet, be estimated at its full value.
[Sidenote: caused by the increase of physical science]

This revolution--for it is nothing less--in the political and social aspects
of modern civilisation has been preceded, accompanied, and in great
measure caused, by a less obvious, but no less marvellous, increase of
natural knowledge, and especially of that part of it which is known as
Physical Science, in consequence of the application of scientific
method to the investigation of the phenomena of the material world.
Not that the growth of physical science is an exclusive prerogative of
the Victorian age. Its present strength and volume merely indicate the
highest level of a stream which took its rise, alongside of the primal
founts of Philosophy, Literature, and Art, in ancient Greece; and, after
being dammed up for a thousand years, once more began to flow three
centuries ago.
[Sidenote: Greek and mediæval science.]
It may be doubted if even-handed justice, as free from fulsome
panegyric as from captious depreciation, has ever yet been dealt out to
the sages of antiquity who, for eight centuries, from the time of Thales
to that of Galen, toiled at the foundations of physical science. But,
without entering into the discussion of that large question, it is certain
that the labors of these early workers in the field of natural knowledge
were brought to a standstill by the decay and disruption of the Roman
Empire, the consequent disorganisation of society, and the diversion of
men's thoughts from sublunary matters to the problems of the
supernatural world suggested by Christian dogma in the Middle Ages.
And, notwithstanding sporadic attempts to recall men to the
investigation of nature, here and there, it was not until the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries that physical science made a new start, founding
itself, at first, altogether upon that which had been done by the Greeks.
Indeed, it must be admitted that the men of the Renaissance, though
standing on the shoulders of the old philosophers, were a long time
before they saw as much as their forerunners had done.
The first serious attempts to carry further the unfinished work of
Archimedes, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy, of Aristotle and of Galen,
naturally enough arose among the astronomers and the physicians. For
the imperious necessity of seeking some remedy for the physical ills of

life had insured the preservation of more or less of the wisdom of
Hippocrates and his successors, and, by a happy conjunction of
circumstances, the Jewish and the Arabian physicians and philosophers
escaped many of the influences which, at that time, blighted natural
knowledge in the Christian world. On the other hand, the superstitious
hopes and fears which afforded countenance to astrology and to
alchemy also sheltered astronomy and the germs of chemistry. Whether
for this,