724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



THE CHAEACTEE OF MODEEN KNOWLEDGE.' 



Br J. L. W. THUDICHUM, M. D. 



THE science of the present age is distinguishable from the learning 

 of past ages by many important features. By these it haiS in- 

 deed somewhat altered the sense originally attributable to its name, 

 and science has become a word of greater precision, and therefore of a 

 less broad significance than what may be termed mere knowledge. 

 This is so little understood, that when lately a great statesman and 

 orator met some of his constituents in a southeastern suburb of this 

 metropolis, he informed them, among other things, that science was 

 merely another term for knowledge. Even if it had been so origin- 

 ally, and tlie Latin word scientia had been merely the equivalent of 

 the Saxon word knowledge, it would have to be admitted that the re- 

 lations have changed by one of those conventions which are silent and 

 convenient. We hold that the systemic enunciation of mere knowl- 

 edge is doctrine ; that science is a kind of knowledge, but that not 

 all knowledge is science. Science is that kind of kno*vledge the cor- 

 rectness and truth of which can be proved by evidence convincing to 

 all healthy understandings. Science is a series of potentialized axioms, 

 which when once mastered are as evident as the simple axioms in 

 mathematics, wliich are said to be so self-evident as to require no 

 proof. By this definition a very large amount of human knowledge 

 or doctrine is at once excluded from the domain of science. The 

 learning of past ages was mainly imitative, little observant of new 

 phenomena. Those ages had too much work on hand, first in the de- 

 velopment of their languages, in which they used imitations countless 

 in number, next in the shape of securing the conditions of social life in 

 the form of communities and states. But even where these may be 

 said to iiave been secured, e. g., at the height of power of the Roman 

 Empire, science was not developed, and it may be said that this ab- 

 sence of scientific treatment of the common problems of life has been 

 one of the principal causes of the downfall of that, and of many other 

 states. Famines, epidemics, among men and cattle, and wars, are 

 made possible or necessary only by the absence or faulty application 

 of the principles taught by science. Science, by teaching that, and 

 how, these evils are to be avoided, has a field in this generation, of 

 which the past had not even a distant conception. Imitative learning 

 shows itself mainly as art, buildings, sculptures, paintings ; all the 

 mass of temples and gods which fill the world's history and imagina- 

 tion are of this kind. There is no science about a Greek or Egyptian 

 temple, simply because there is no value in it ; it does not satisfy, to 



' Introductory remarks to a course of lectures on the " Life and Labors of Prof. 

 Liebig. 



