History of the Inductive Sciences

"Geometry and Mechanics were cultivated for their own sakes; but they also supplied ideas, language, and reasoning to other sciences. If the Greeks had not cultivated Conic Sections, Kepler could not have superseded Ptolemy; if the Greeks had cultivated Dynamics, Kepler might have anticipated Newton."

"The reader will recollect that we are here speaking of the Principia as a mechanical treatise only... As a work on dynamics, its merit is, that it contains a wonderful store of refined and beautiful mathematical artifices, applied to solve all the most general problems which the subject offered. It can hardly be said to contain any new inductive discovery respecting the principles of mechanics; for though Newton's "Axioms or Laws of Motion," which stand at the beginning of the book, are a much clearer and more general statement of the grounds of mechanics than had yet appeared, it can hardly be said that they contain any doctrines which had not been previously stated or taken for granted by other mathematicians."

"We have now to contemplate the last and most splendid period of the progress of Astronomy... the first great example of a wide and complex assemblage of phenomena indubitably traced to their single simple cause... the first example of the formation of a perfect Inductive Science.<!--1847-V2p135->"

"In his "Description of the Intellectual Globe," Bacon says that while Astronomy had... it for her business, to inquire into the rules of the heavenly motions, and Philosophy, into their causes, they had both so far worked without due appreciation of their respective tasks; Philosophy neglecting facts, and Astronomy claiming assent to her mathematical hypotheses, which ought to be considered as mere steps of calculation. "Since, therefore," he continues, "each science has hitherto been a slight and ill-constructed thing, we must assuredly take a firmer stand; our ground being, that these two subjects, which on account of the narrowness of men's views and the traditions of professors have been so long dissevered, are, in fact, one and the same thing, and compose one body of science." ...[H]owever erroneous might be the points of Bacon's positive astronomical creed, these general views of the nature and position of the science are most sound and philosophical."

"In his attempts to suggest a right physical view of the starry heavens and their relation to the earth, Bacon failed, along with all the writers of his time. ...[T]he main cause of this failure was the want of a knowledge of the true theory of motion;—the non-existence of the science of Dynamics."

"At the time of Bacon and Kepler, it was only just beginning to be possible to trace the heavenly motions to the laws of earthly motion, because the [laws] were only just then divulged. Accordingly, we have seen that the whole of Kepler's physical speculations proceed upon an ignorance of the first law of motion, and assume it to be the main problem of the physical astronomer to assign the cause which keeps up the motions of the planets."

"Kepler's doctrine is, that a certain Force or Virtue resides in the sun, by which all bodies within his influence are carried round him. He illustrates the nature of this Virtue in various ways, comparing it to Light, and to the Magnetic Power, which it resembles in the circumstances of operating at a distance, and also in exercising a feebler influence as the distance becomes greater."

"But another image to which [Kepler] referred, suggested a much more substantial and conceivable kind of mechanical action by which the celestial motions might be produced, namely, a current of fluid matter circulating round the sun, and carrying the planet with it, like a boat in a stream. In the Table of Contents of the work on the planet Mars, the purport of the chapter... is stated... "A physical speculation, in which it is demonstrated that the vehicle of that Virtue which urges the planets, circulates through the spaces of the universe after the manner of a river or whirlpool (vortex,) moving quicker than the planets." ...Kepler's phrases concerning the moving force,—the magnetic nature,—the immaterial virtue of the sun... convey no distinct conception, except so far as they are interpreted by the expressions just quoted. A vortex of fluid constantly whirling round the sun, kept in this whirling motion by the rotation of the sun himself, and carrying the planets round the sun by its revolution, as a whirlpool carries straws, could be readily understood; and though it appears to have been held by Kepler that this current and vortex was immaterial, he ascribes to it the power of overcoming the inertia of bodies, and of putting them and keeping them in motion, the only material properties with which he had anything to do."

"Nor... was it easy for any one at Kepler's time to devise a more plausible theory than the theory of vortices... It was only with the formation and progress of the science of mechanics that this theory became untenable."

"But if Kepler might be excused, or indeed admired, for propounding the theory of vortices at his time, the case was different when the laws of motion had been fully developed, and when those who knew the state of mechanical science ought to have learned to consider the motions of the stars as a mechanical problem, subject to the same conditions as other mechanical problems, and capable of the same exactness of solution. And there was an especial inconsistency in the circumstance of the Theory of Vortices being put forwards by Descartes, who pretended, or was asserted by his admirers, to have been one of the discoverers of the true laws of motion. It... shows both great conceit and great shallowness, that he should have proclaimed with much pomp this crude invention of the ante-mechanical period, at the time when the best mathematicians of Europe, as Borelli in Italy, Hooke and Wallis in England, Huyghens in Holland, were patiently labouring to bring the mechanical problem of the universe into its most distinct form, in order that it might be solved at last and for ever."

"I do not mean to assert that Descartes borrowed his doctrines from Kepler, or from any of his predecessors; for the theory was sufficiently obvious..."

"Reflections on the Discovery.—Such, then, is the great Newtonian induction of universal gravitation, and such its history. It is indisputably and incomparably the greatest scientific discovery ever made, whether we look at the advance which it involved, the extent of the truth disclosed, or the fundamental and satisfactory nature of this truth."

"Galvani appears never to have acquired much general knowledge of electricity: Volta, on the other hand, had laboured at this branch of knowledge from the age of eighteen, through a period of nearly thirty years; and had invented an electrophorus and an electrical condenser, which showed great experimental skill. When he turned his attention to the experiments made by Galvani, he observed that the author of them had been far more surprized than he needed to be, at those results in which an electrical spark was produced; and that it was only in the cases in which no such apparatus was employed, that the observations could justly be considered as indicating a new law, or a new kind of electricity. He soon satisfied himself (about 1794) that the essential conditions of this kind of action depended on the metals;—that it is brought into play most decidedly when two different metals touch each other, and are connected by any moist body;—and that the parts of animals which had been used discharged the office both of such moist bodies, and of very sensitive electrometers. The animal electricity of Galvani might, he observed, be with more propriety called metallic electricity. ...The term "animal electricity" has been superseded by others, of which galvanism is perhaps the most familiar."

"[T]he voltaic pile, which Volta described in the Philosophical Transactions for 1800... was, in fact, a more important step in the history of electricity than the Leyden jar had been."

"[I]t was discovered by Nicholson and Carlisle, in 1800, that water was decomposed by the pile of Volta; that is, it was found that when the wires of the pile were placed with their ends near each other in the fluid, a stream of bubbles of air arose from each wire, and these airs were found on examination to be oxygen and hydrogen; which... had already been found to be the constituents of water. This was as Davy says, the true origin of all that has been done in electro-chemical science. ...Cruickshank in pursuing these experiments added to them many important new results such as the decomposition of muriates of magnesia soda and ammonia by the pile and the general observation that the alkaline matter always appeared at the negative and the acid at the positive pole."

"Humphry Davy was... in 1801, appointed lecturer at the Royal Institution in London, (then recently established,) he was soon put in possession of a galvanic apparatus of great power; and with this he was not long in obtaining the most striking results."

"The Novum Organon of Bacon was suitably ushered into the world by his Advancement of Learning; and any attempt to continue and extend his Reform of the Methods and Philosophy of Science may, like his, be most fitly preceded by, and founded upon, a comprehensive Survey of the existing state of human knowledge. The wish to contribute something, however little it may be, to such a Reform, gave rise to that study of the History of Science of which the present Work is the fruit."

"If Bacon had weighed well all that Science had achieved in his time, and had laid down a complete scheme of rules for scientific research, so far as they could be collected from the lights of that age, it would still be incumbent upon the philosophical world to augment as well as preserve the inheritance which he left; by combining with his doctrines such new views as the advances of later times cannot fail to produce or suggest; and by endeavouring to provide, for every kind of truth, methods of research as effective as those to which we owe the clearest and surest portions of our knowledge. Such a renovation and extension of the reform of philosophy appears to belong peculiarly to our own time."

"A very important advantage would be gained, if any light could be thrown upon the modes of discovering truth, the powers that we possess for this end, and the points to which these may most profitably be applied."

"The Great Reform of Philosophy and Method, in which Bacon so eloquently called upon men to unite their exertions in his day, has, even in ours, been very imperfectly carried into effect. And even if his plan had been fully executed, it would now require to be pursued and extended."