456 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE SCIENCE OF OBSERVATION. 



By CHARLES LIVY WHITTLE. 



nn HIS is an era of observation ; in many fields and in divers coun- 

 -*- tries the study of Nature from a strictly scientific standpoint 

 is being prosecuted with results which are rapidly increasing our 

 knowledge of the universe. This modern growth has come about as 

 the natural rebound of the suppressed energy that has been held 

 forcibly under subjugation during the last two thousand years, at a 

 time when the closing echoes of the warfare between the literal inter- 

 pretation of the Scriptures and science have ceased. 



A review of this long battle with the forces of the Catholic and 

 Protestant churches on the one hand, arrayed against a relatively 

 few investigators, scattered through the last ten centuries, on the 

 other hand, shows a record on which none can look without regret. 

 As far as we are able to learn, there was little opposition to the study 

 of science before the collection and translation of the old manuscripts 

 now constituting the Alexandrian version of the Bible and the con- 

 sequent upbuilding of the Jewish church. The remains of ancient 

 Egyptian civilization show that science prior to that period, as 

 measured by the discoveries in physics and astronomy, had attained 

 no inconsiderable prominence; and had this people endured until 

 the present time, uninfluenced by the strife that for many centuries 

 racked the inhabitants of the eastern hemisphere, we should to-day 

 be far more advanced in our understanding of the universe. 



In the more progressive countries, at least, the breaking of the 

 shackles in which the investigating mind had been imprisoned for so 

 long has led not only to a greater number of scientific workers, but 

 also to an increase in the fields of observation. The methods of in- 

 vestigation have likewise undergone a transformation. In place of 

 deductive reasoning, even as late as a few decades in the past, con- 

 clusions and generalizations are now founded on lines of thought 

 more largely inductive. Men of middle age are able to recall the 

 time when even our leading institutions of learning required instruc- 

 tion in several branches of science to be given by one teacher. It 

 was possible twenty-five years ago for a man of great ability to 

 master the essentials of the leading sciences and to teach them, but 

 under the present stimulus for investigation no one can hope to 

 excel in more than one subject. It has thus come about that in place 

 of the many-sided teacher of science we now have in our larger uni- 

 versities specialists in every subject. As the work of research pro- 

 gresses, the specialist — for example, in geology — is compelled by the 

 increased scope of the information on his subject to select one branch 



