GREEK SCIENCE AND MODERN 

 SCIENCE 



A COMPARISON AND A CONTRAST 



ALTHOUGH the philosophical historian has flourished 

 in England as perhaps nowhere else in the world, the 

 approach to Science through History has yet been much 

 neglected in this country. The subject was well opened, 

 it is true, by the great Master of Trinity to whom the 

 Cambridge scientific school owes so much, and he was 

 ably seconded by one of the most brilliant and original 

 men who have adorned this College. But it is nigh 

 three generations since Whewell and De Morgan 

 wrote the masterpieces that have carried their names 

 to our day, and no historian of Science has since 

 appeared among us to rival Tannery and Schiaparelli 

 in philosophic grasp, or Boncompagni, Cantor and 

 Duhem in learning. In the kindred department of the 

 History of Medicine our record has, if anything, been 

 even worse. With the single exception of Francis 

 Adams, who belonged to the same generation as 

 Whewell and De Morgan, we have had no medical 

 historian whose achievements have been of the front 

 rank, no one to place by the side of Sprengel, Haeser, and 

 Pagel in Germany ; of De Renzi in Italy ; and of Darem- 

 berg, Malgaigne, and Nicaise in France. Left without 

 academic recognition, the History of Science and the 

 History of Medicine have indeed earned in this country 

 a reputation for triviality and inconsequence by their 



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