THE DEBT OF THE WORLD TO PURE SCIENCE. 



BY JOHN J, STEVENSON. 



[John J. Stevenson, geologist; born New York, October 10, 1841 ; educated in private 

 schools, and graduated from New York university in 1863; United States geologist, 

 1873-74 and 1878-80; geologist Pennsylvania geological survey, 1875-78 and 1881-82; 

 New York Academy of Sciences, 1896-98; president Geological Society of America, 

 1898; professor of geology. New York university, since 1871. Author of many reports 

 on geological investigations, especially in Pennsylvania and Colorado.] 



The fundamental importance of abstruse research re- 

 ceives too httle consideration in our time. The practical 

 side of life is all absorbent; the results of research are utilized 

 promptly, and full recognition is awarded to the one who 

 utilizes while the investigator is ignored. The student him- 

 self is liable to be regarded as a relic of mediaeval times, and 

 his unconcern respecting ordinary matters is serviceable to 

 the dramatist and newspaper witlet in their times of need. 



Yet every thoughtful man, far away as his calling may be 

 from scientific investigation, hesitates to accept such judg- 

 ment as accurate. Not a few, engrossed in the strife of the 

 market place, are convinced that, even from the selfish stand- 

 point of mere enjoyment, less gain is found in amassing for- 

 tunes or in acquiring power over one's fellows than in the 

 effort to solve nature's problems. Men scoff at philosophical 

 dreamers, but the scoffing is not according to knowledge. The 

 exigencies of subjective philosophy brought about the objec- 

 tive philosophy. Error has lecl to the right. Alchemy pre- 

 pared the way for chemistry; astrolog}^ for astronomy; cos- 

 mogony for geology. The birth of inductive science was due 

 to the necessities of deductive science, and the greatest devel- 

 opment of the former has come from the trial of hj'potheses 

 belonging in the borderland between science and philosophy. 



My effort in this paper is to show that discoveries, which 

 have proved all important in secondary results, did not burst 

 forth full grown; that in each case they were, so to say, the 

 crown of a structure reared painfully and noiselessly by men 



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