36 IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



co-ordinating mind. Few formations had been studied and none 

 with thoroughness. There was no arrangement of historical 

 periods, no glacial theory, no scientific petrography, no con- 

 ception of the vastness of geological time. 



Such, in brief, was the history of the great features of our 

 sciences, and such their condition so far as they existed up to 

 one hundred years ago, regarded only as a body of fact and 

 theory. As regards the dissemination of scientific truth, the 

 conditions were even more primitive. A hundred years ago 

 Chemistry had not emerged from the cave or cellar, and the 

 naturalist was looked upon as an uncauny individual of 

 questionable position in the community. Scientific knowledge 

 in those days was mainly confined to savants, and there was 

 little scientific literature outside the proceedings of a few 

 learned scientists. Books for popular instruction, text-books 

 and popular scientific lectures were practically unknown. 

 Systematic instruction in science was given only in a few of 

 the universities, and in this instruction the laboratory played 

 no part. The first laboratory for students in chemistry was 

 thatof Liebig, founded in 1824;andthe firstphysical laboratory 

 was founded abDu^: 1845. There is no need, in this place, to 

 compare or rather contrast such conditions with those of the 

 present. 



It might be interesting, if time permitted, t) turn our atten- 

 tion to the iofluecce of science. Omitting its influence in 

 material w.iys which is as wide as industry itself, let us for a 

 few moments turn our attention to its influence up an thought. 



It is chiefly to scienc3 that we owe our present democracy 

 of thought. As late as the seventeenth century, msn went 

 with profound faith to Aristotle for their science, and his 

 authority was absolute. It was, therefore, a momentous occa- 

 sion for science when Galileo, one fine morning about the mid- 

 dle of the S3venteenth cent ary, before the assembled university, 

 dropped, at the same time, two shot, of one aad one hun- 

 dred pounds weight, from the top of the tower at Pis3, showing 

 that they struck th3 ground at the same time, and declared 

 that Aristotle was wrong. He went to prison for his rashness. 

 By the authority of Newton, the corpuscular theory of light 

 was fastened upon physics for a century. Since those times 

 men of science have learned to disregard mere opinion. The 

 determined fight of Priestley for p'nlogistoj. could not save it, 

 and the opposition of Cuvier and Agassiz to the theory of 



