THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE 
DEVELOPMENT OF METEOROLOGY. 
By CLEVELAND ABBE, 
The ultimate goal of scientific research is not the collection of facts 
furnished by explorations and surveys, not even the exact data fur- 
nished by the most laborious measurements as in astronomy, geodesy, 
chemistry, and physics. Neither is it the framing of a few generali- 
zations and inductions, such as the general idea of evolution; nor is it 
the establishment of some isolated fundamental laws, such as the 
attraction of gravitation, the conservation of energy, the mechanical 
equivalent of heat, the atomic weights and their periodic law. Re- 
search aims to go deeper than all this and show how these laws and 
phenomena result necessarily from a few simple premises—not pre- 
mises in the sense of assumption, but axioms that are just as truly 
the basis of the physical universe as Euclid’s axionfs are the basis of 
geometry. These premises or axioms, so far as we can at present see, 
almost certainly belong to the realm of what we call mechanics, or 
the laws of force and matter; it may be the mechanics of molecules, 
atoms, and ions, or it may be the mechanics of solids, fluids, or gases; 
that is to say, it may be the mechanics of individual molecules, 
or that of masses of molecules. Moreover, these questions of me- 
chanics always involve some mathematical study—some graphical, 
numerical, geometrical, or analytical method; in every case the prog- 
ress of exact science must wait on the progress of pure mathematics. 
Owing to the numerous relations between the study of the atmos- 
phere and every other branch of science, meteorology has been from 
time to time classed as a part of chemistry, physics, geology, and 
geography, but is now assuming an independence that justifies its 
recognition as a distinct subject; this fact requires us to explain dis- 
tinctly of what meteorology consists. It is not a mere description of 
atmospheric phenomena, neither is it a system of maps and predic- 
tions; it is not a popular climatology, nor merely a mathematical 
@ Annual presidential address before the Philosophical Society of Washington, 
December 8, 1906. 
287 
