90 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



Schools and colleges of science, triposes, examinations, 

 and degrees in science, have established a popular mean- 

 ing which did not exist a hundred years ago, but which 

 is now well understood. For my purpose it is of some 

 interest to note that the meaning of the word in French 

 is somewhat different, and that the word Wissenschaft, 1 



ciety, and sometimes the Royal 

 Institution, use the word " philo- 

 sophy " in formal and official state- 

 ments of their object. This is in 

 accordance with older English 

 usage. What we now universally 

 call science was not infrequently 

 termed in the seventeenth century 

 natural knowledge, and Bacon him- 

 self translates scientice by "know- 

 ledge," by "learning," and some- 

 times by "sciences." In France, 

 on the other hand, the word " sci- 

 ence " seems to have acquired its 

 present meaning as far back as the 

 middle of the seventeenth century. 

 At the time of the foundation of 

 the "Academic des Sciences," in 

 1666, the word was used almost in 

 the same sense embracing the 

 same separate departments of know- 

 ledge as the word "science" is now 

 used in this country when we speak 

 of a college of science. In France, 

 so far as I am aware, a cultivator 

 of science has never been called a 

 philosopher. Science and philos- 

 ophy have there never been synony- 

 mous. But science in France has 

 been made to cover a larger field 

 of knowledge by such adjectives as 

 " moral," " social," " political," and 

 has been narrowed by such other 

 adjectives as "exact" and "natural," 

 in the same way as the word philos- 

 ophy has been more strictly defined 

 in the English language by the ad- 

 jectives '' natural," " experimental," 

 "moral," "mental," &c. At the 

 head of the sciences in France stood 

 " mathematics," at the base of the 



new philosophy in England stood 

 " experiment " and " observation." 



1 The word Wissenschaft has a 

 much wider meaning than science 

 in the modern sense, and is the 

 literal translation of the Latin 

 seientia. It means knowledge in 

 a systematic form and connected 

 by some method. What the French 

 call science, the Germans call exacte 

 Wissenschaft. This includes mathe- 

 matics and Naturwissenschaft, which 

 covers the ground covered by the 

 word "sciences" in English. The 

 word Wissenschaft plays an import- 

 ant part in German culture, as we 

 shall see later on. The modern 

 term "scientist" is about synony- 

 mous with the word Naturforscher 

 in German. The word savant in 

 French has no synonym in English, 

 but is about equivalent to the term 

 Gelehrter in German ; and this, 

 again, is partially translated by 

 " scholar " in English. I suppose 

 " man of science " and " scholar " to- 

 gether would be about covered by 

 either savant or Gelehrter. Those 

 who desire to study the older and 

 modern, the English and foreign, 

 uses of the word science and other 

 kindred terms, should read Bacon's 

 English writings ; Weld's ' History 

 of the Royal Society ' (1848, vol. i. ) ; 

 Bence Jones's ' The Royal Institu- 

 tion '(1871); Le"on Aucoc's ' L'lnsti- 

 tut de France ' (Paris, 1889); Alfred 

 Maury, ' Les Academies d'autref ois ' 

 (vol. i., Paris, 1864) ; and the cor- 

 respondence in connection with the 

 foundation of the British Associa- 



