Equations of Condition in Naval Architecture. 297 



unconnected arithmetical results; and order, and a system of 

 definite relations, would assume the place of irregularity, appa- 

 rent accident, and chance. 



And here also it may be remarked, that it has hitherto been 

 too much the practice of those connected with naval inquiries, 

 to view the various elements of ship-building in the light of 

 detached and insulated quantities, and not as parts of a sys- 

 tem which possess the most perfect and intimate relation to 

 each other, and incapable in fact of separation. How often, 

 from the imperfect condition of this branch of knowledge, 

 have the most laborious disquisitions on stability, or the dis- 

 placement, and indeed most of the elements of naval archi- 

 tecture, had this detached and insulated character, their 

 authors neglecting to keep in view the gradually inductive 

 steps by which one branch of the inquiry is led on to another, 

 and how each individual principle of the system is related to 

 the elements that surround it. 



No one who investigates the present condition of naval ar- 

 chitecture can for a moment allow that it has been benefited 

 in any material degree, by the example which the great re- 

 former of philosophy exhibited to the experimental world. 

 There has been little of what may be truly termed inductive 

 inquiry displayed in its history ; and it now stands almost a 

 solitary monument of the folly which guided the predecessors 

 of Bacon in the paths of experimental investigation. Yet in 

 no subject is there greater room for the application of the most 

 rigid principles of the inductive logic. Millions of ships have 

 been constructed, but only here and there a successful exam- 

 ple has been offered for our contemplation, as if to mock the 

 implicit obedience we pay in the practice of ship-building to 

 uncertain and ill-defined rules. 



There is one subject more relating to the tables of Chap- 

 man, to which we would briefly advert, and that is notation. 

 A simple inspection of the Sweedish engineer's tables will show 

 that their celebrated author did not avail himself of all the 

 advantages that this powerful instrument is capable of impart- 

 ing. There is more in notation, to adopt a familiar phrase, 

 than first meets the eye. Simplicity, uniformity, generality, — 

 a capability itself of suggesting new relations and inquiries ; — 



