SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.^ 



By William North Rice. 



It is an interesting fact that tlie life of our association is almost 

 coextensive with that nineteenth century of Christian civilization wiiich 

 is now drawing- to a close. In intellectual, as in physical phenomena, 

 we are tempted to overestimate the magnitude of near objects and to 

 underestimate that of distant ones; but science and art tend to advance 

 with accelerated velocity, and we areundoubtedly right in ranking the 

 achievements of our age in science and its applications as far greater 

 than tliose of any previous century. 



When our predecessors assembled a hundred years ago to organize 

 this Academy, they could avail themselves of 'no other means of trans- 

 portation than those which were in use before the time of Homer. If 

 the distances over land were too great for convenient walking, the}^ 

 were carried or drawn by horses. If they had occasion to ci'oss bodies 

 of water, they used oars or sails. We have been brought to our desti- 

 nation to-day by the forces of steam and electricit3^ 



The harnessing of these mighty forces for man's use has transformed 

 not only the modes of transportation, but the processes of production 

 of all kinds of commodities. It has wrought a revolution in the whole 

 industrial system. The day of the small workshop is gone. The da}' 

 of the great factory is come. Every phase of human life is atfected by 

 those arts which have arisen from the applications of science. Com- 

 forts and luxuries w^hich a hundred years ago were beyond the reach 

 of the most wealthy are now^ available for the use of even the poor. 

 Aniline dyes give to fabrics used for clothing or decoration colors 

 besides which those of the rainbow are pale neutral tints. Sanitary 

 science arrests the massacre of the innocents, and increases the average 

 duration of human life. Anaesthetics and antiseptics take away from 

 surgery its pain and its peril. 



But though our asssociation is an academy of arts and sciences it 

 has, at least in its later life, devoted itself chiefly to the cultivation of 

 pure science, leaving to other organizations the development of the 



^Address at the Centennial Celebration of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences, October 11, 1899. Printed in .Science, December 29, 1899. 



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