The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century | Page 3

indicated where the goal of physical
science really lay. However, Descartes was an eminent mathematician,
and it would seem that the bent of his mind led him to overestimate the
value of deductive reasoning from general principles, as much as Bacon
had underestimated it. The progress of physical science has been
effected neither by Baconians nor by Cartesians, as such, but by men
like Galileo and Harvey, Boyle and Newton, who would have done
their work just as well if neither Bacon nor Descartes had ever
propounded their views respecting the manner in which scientific
investigation should be pursued.
[Sidenote: For a time the progress without fruits.]
The progress of science, during the first century after Bacon's death, by
means verified his sanguine prediction of the fruits which it would
yield. For, though the revived and renewed study of nature had spread
and grown to an extent which surpassed reasonable expectation, the
practical results--the 'good to men's estate'--were, at first, by no means
apparent. Sixty years after Bacon's death, Newton had crowned the
long labors of the astronomers and the physicists, by coordinating the

phenomena of solar motion throughout the visible universe into one
vast system; but the 'Principia' helped no man to either wealth or
comfort. Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz had opened up new worlds to
the mathematician, but the acquisitions of their genius enriched only
man's ideal estate. Descartes had laid the foundations of rational
cosmogony and of physiological psychology; Boyle had produced
models of experimentation in various branches of physics and
chemistry; Pascal and Torricelli had weighed the air; Malpighi and
Grew, Ray and Willoughby had done work of no less importance in the
biological sciences; but weaving and spinning were carried on with the
old appliances; nobody could travel faster by sea or by land than at any
previous time in the world's history, and King George could send a
message from London to York no faster than King John might have
done. Metals were worked from their ores by immemorial rule of
thumb, and the centre of the iron trade of these islands was still among
the oak forests of Sussex. The utmost skill of our mechanicians did not
get beyond the production of a coarse watch.
The middle of the eighteenth century is illustrated by a host of great
names in science--English, French, German, and Italian--especially in
the fields of chemistry, geology, and biology; but this deepening and
broadening of natural knowledge produced next to no immediate
practical benefits. Even if, at this time, Francis Bacon could have
returned to the scene of his greatness and of his littleness, he must have
regarded the philosophic world which praised and disregarded his
precepts with great disfavor. If ghosts are consistent, he would have
said, 'These people are all wasting their time, just as Gilbert and Kepler
and Galileo and my worthy physician Harvey did in my day. Where are
the fruits of the restoration of science which I promised? This
accumulation of bare knowledge is all very well, but cui bono? Not one
of these people is doing what I told him specially to do, and seeking
that secret of the cause of forms which will enable men to deal, at will,
with matter, and superinduce new natures upon the old foundations.'
[Sidenote: Its recent effect on life.]
But, a little later, that growth of knowledge beyond imaginable

utilitarian ends, which is the condition precedent of its practical utility,
began to produce some effect upon practical life; and the operation of
that part of nature we call human upon the rest began to create, not
'new natures,' in Bacon's sense, but a new Nature, the existence of
which is dependent upon men's efforts, which is subservient to their
wants, and which would disappear if man's shaping and guiding hand
were withdrawn. Every mechanical artifice, every chemically pure
substance employed in manufacture, every abnormally fertile race of
plants, or rapidly growing and fattening breed of animals, is a part of
the new Nature created by science. Without it, the most densely
populated regions of modern Europe and America must retain their
primitive, sparsely inhabited, agricultural or pastoral condition; it is the
foundation of our wealth and the condition of our safety from
submergence by another flood of barbarous hordes; it is the bond which
unites into a solid political whole, regions larger than any empire of
antiquity; it secures us from the recurrence of the pestilences and
famines of former times; it is the source of endless comforts and
conveniences, which are not mere luxuries, but conduce to physical and
moral well-being. During the last fifty years, this new birth of time, this
new Nature begotten by science upon fact, has pressed itself daily and
hourly upon our attention, and has worked miracles which have
modified the whole