572 



NATURE 



[October 13, 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC 

 INSTRUCTION} 



'pHE two addresses by my colleagues Profs. Judd and 

 Roberts-Austen have drawn attention to the general 

 history of our College and the details of one part of our 

 organisation. I propose to deal with another part, the 

 consideration of which is of very great importance at the 

 present time, for we are in one of those educational move- 

 ments which spring up from time to time and mould the 

 progress of civilisation. The question of a Teaching 

 University in the largest city in the world, Secondary 

 Education, and so-called Technical Education are now 

 occupying men's minds. 



At the beginning it is imperative that I should call 

 your attention to the fact that the stern necessities of the 

 human race have been the origin of all branches of science 

 and learning ; that all so-called educational movements 

 have been based upon the actual requirements of the 

 time. There has never been an educational movement 

 for learning's sake; but of course there have always been 

 studies and students apart from any of those general 

 movements to which I am calling attention ; still we have 

 to come down to the times of Louis Quatorze before the 

 study of the useless, the 7nhne inutile, was recognised 

 as a matter of national concern. 



It is perhaps the more necessary to insist upon stern 

 necessity as being the origin of learning, because it is so 

 difficult for us now to put ourselves in the place of those 

 early representatives of our race that had to face the 

 problems of life among conditionings of which they were 

 profoundly ignorant : when night meant death ; when 

 there was no certainty that the sun would rise on 

 the morrow ; when the growth of a plant from seed was 

 unrecognised ; when a yearly return of seasons might as 

 well be a miracle as a proof of a settled order of phe- 

 nomena ; when, finally, neither cause nor effect had been 

 traced in the operations of nature. 



It is doubtless in consequence of this difficulty that 

 some of the early races have been credited by some 

 authors with a special love of abstract science, of science 

 for its own sake ; so that this, and not stern necessity, was 

 the motive of their inquiries. Thus we have been told 

 that the Chaldasans differed from the other early races 

 in having a predilection for astronomy, another deter- 

 mining factor being that the vast plains in that country 

 provided them with a perfect horizon. 



The first historic glimpses of the study of astronomy 

 we find among the peoples occupying the Nile Valley 

 and Chaldasa, say 6000 B.C. 



But this study had to do with the fixing of the length of 

 the year, and the determination of those times in it in which 

 the various agricultural operations had to be performed. 

 These were related strictly to the rise of the Nile in one 

 country and of the Euphrates in the other. All human 

 activity was in fact tied up with the movements of the 

 sun, moon and stars. These, then, became the gods of 

 those early peoples, and the astronomers, the seers, were 

 the first priests ; revered by the people because as inter- 

 preters of the celestial powers they were the custodians of 

 the knowledge which was the most necessary for the 

 purposes of life. 



Eudemus of Rhodes, one of the principal pupils of 

 Aristotle, in his History of Geometry, attributes the 

 origin of geometry to the Egyptians, " who were obliged 

 to invent it in order to restore the landmarks which had 

 been destroyed by the inundation of the Nile," and observes 

 'that It IS by no means strange that the invention of the 

 Sciences should have originated in practical needs." 2 

 The new geometry was brought from Egypt to Greece 

 by Thales three hundred years before Aristotle was born. 



l2.VP^t^^^:f.Ti:i:tc^^lf,. ^^^"^^^ ""' ^'^■^"^^ ^^ ^Ir Norman 

 ^ " Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid," p. 2. (Allman.) 

 NO. 151 I, VOL. 58] 



When to astronomy and geometry we add the elements 

 of medicine and surgery, which it is known were familiar 

 to the ancient Egyptians, it will be conceded that we are, 

 in those early times, face to face with the cultivation of 

 the most useful branches of science. 



Now, although the evidence is increasing day by day 

 that Greek science was Egyptian in its origin, there is 

 no doubt that its cultivation in Greece was more extended, 

 and that it was largely developed there. One of the 

 most useful and prolific writers on philosophy and 

 science who has ever lived, Aristotle, was born in the 

 fourth century B.C. P>om him, it may be said, dates a 

 general conception of science based on observation as 

 differing from experiment. If you wish to get an idea of 

 the science of those times, read his writings on Physics 

 and on the Classification of Animals. All sought in 

 Aristotle the basis of knowledge, but they only read his 

 philosophy ; Dante calls him " the Master of those who 

 know." 1 



Why was Aristotle so careful to treat science as well as 

 philosophy, with which his master, Plato, had dealt almost 

 exclusively ? 



The answer to this question is of great interest to our 

 present subject. The late Lord Playfair^ in a pregnant 

 passage, suggests the reason, and the later history of 

 Europe shows, I think, that he is right. 



" We find that just as early nations became rich and 

 prosperous, so did philosophy arise among them, and it 

 declined with the decadence of material prosperity. In 

 those splendid days of Greece, when Plato, Aristotle, and 

 Zeno were the representatives of great schools of thought, 

 which still exercise their influence on mankind, Greece 

 was_ a great manufacturing and mercantile community ; 

 Corinth was the seat of the manufacture of hardware ; 

 Athens that of jewellery, shipbuilding and pottery. The 

 rich men of Greece and all its free citizens were actively 

 engaged in trade and commerce. The learned class Avere 

 the sons of those citizens, and were in possession of their 

 accumulated experience derived through industry and 

 foreign relations. Thales was an oil merchant ; Aristotle 

 inherited wealth from his father, who was a physician, 

 but, spending it, is believed to have supported himself as 

 a druggist till Philip appointed him tutor to Alexander. 

 Plato's wealth was largely derived from commerce, and 

 his master, Socrates, is said to have been a sculptor. 

 Zeno, too, was a travelling merchant. Archimedes is 

 perhaps an exception, for he is said to have been closely » 

 related to a prince ; but if so, he is the only princely dis- , I 

 coverer of science on record." ' '^ I 



In ancient Greece we see the flood of the first great 

 intellectual tide. Alas ! it never touched the shores of 

 Western Europe, but it undoubtedly reached to Rome, 

 and there must have been very much more observ- 

 ational science taught in the Roman studia than we 

 generally imagine, otherwise how account for Pliny, the 

 vast public works, their civilising influence carried 

 over sea and land from beyond Bab-el-Mandeb to Scot- 

 land .? In some directions their applications of science 

 are as yet unsurpassed. 



With the fall of the Roman Empire both science and 

 philosophy disappeared for a while. The first wave had 

 come and gone ; its last feebler ripples seem to have 

 been represented at this time by the gradual change of 

 the Roman secular studia wherever they existed into 

 clerical schools, the more important of which were in 

 time attached to the chief cathedrals and monasteries ; 

 and it is not difficult to understand why the secular (or 

 scientific) instruction was gradually replaced by one more 

 fitted for the training of priests. 



It is not to be wondered at that the ceaseless strife in 

 the centre of Europe had driven what little learning 

 there was to the Western and Southern extremities where 



^ Inferno, c. iv. 130 et seq. 



^ "Subjects of Social Welfare," p. 206 



