2 38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



stimuli will act, or will act strongly, only under favorable social and 

 physical conditions, and these last are what I have called the 

 conditions of the advancement of science. They are a step farther 

 removed from the product than the cause. As crops are culti- 

 vated in soils of different degrees of fertility, so science is pursued 

 under conditions which are more or less favorable to its advancement; 

 but science is not followed to any considerable extent, nor are the best 

 results obtained, except under favorable social conditions. 



The causes leading to the advancement of science are somewhat 

 difficult to trace, so many and varied are the influences affecting the 

 intellectual life. Doubtless our knowledge of science has been increased 

 to some extent by chance discovery, but the amount of credit which 

 should be given to this influence will depend upon our ideas of what 

 is really accidental in discovery. The alchemists, in trying to produce gold 

 from the baser metals, discovered a number of valuable chemical com- 

 pounds. These discoveries were accidental in the sense that they were 

 not the real objects of the researches, yet the compounds would not have 

 been discovered if the alchemists had not been experimenting in the 

 field of chemistry and with those particular chemical elements. Chance 

 discoveries are seldom made far from the field which is attracting at- 

 tention. Certain discoveries, like the properties of saltpeter, may have 

 been wholly accidental; but such discoveries are rare. Therefore in- 

 stead of making pure accident an important cause of the advancement 

 of knowledge, it is more nearly correct to say that an unexpected ele- 

 ment often enters into scientific discovery. 



Another minor influence leading to the progress of knowledge is 

 idle curiosity. Probably the early observations of the stars and the 

 planets were due to little else. Few discoveries, however, can be at- 

 tributed to this stimulus alone, although curiosity in some form doubt- 

 less enters into the majority of scientific discoveries. Professor Ward 2 ' 

 quotes De Candolle as saying, " the principle of all discoveries is curi- 

 osity." But such an assertion gives us little help. Our task lies in at- 

 tempting to discover the various influences which arouse curiosity. 

 Mere curiosity, accompanied by no other motive, seems really to have 

 had little influence in advancing science. It is true that students en- 

 gaged in research may select one problem rather than another, simply 

 because they have a greater interest in it; but their motive for investi- 

 gating some problem is quite different from idle curiosity. 



The greatest stimulus to the progress of science in its earliest stages 

 is to be found in an attempt to achieve some great object. Although 

 logically science is the basis of art, historically early art precedes sci- 

 ence and is the greatest incentive to its advancement. The history of 

 almost all the sciences shows that their beginnings lay in a desire to 



2 ' ' Pure Sociology, ' ' p. 445. 



