98 



It was with Galileo however that scientific 

 research began in Padua, at any rate for professors ; 

 and Galileo may be venerated as the first modern 

 naturalist to set the experimental method concep- 

 tually, coherently, and thoroughly before himself, 

 including the deductive side of it. In the Harveian 

 Oration of 1892, Dr Bridges reminded us that 

 Galileo conceived of motion and energy as cal- 

 culable quantities, and drew our attention to 

 those most interesting experiments wherein Galileo 

 applied the pendulum to measure the rate and 

 rhythm of the pulse. Roger Bacon had dwelt 

 upon experiment, but scarcely upon methodical 

 ^verification thereby. The chemistry of Albert of 

 Cologne was but a return of the curiosity of 

 Geber of Cordova (in the ninth century). Even 

 Francis Bacon saw the method less clearly than 

 Galileo had done ; and, as the last of the school- 

 men and encyclopedists, he made a place for it 

 rather in literature and philosophy: he ignored, 

 as the scientific Descartes welcomed, the car- 

 dinal discoveries of Copernicus and of Harvey 1 . 



1 Not only of the circulation of the blood. In his treatise 

 De generatione Harvey disposed of the belief in spon- 

 taneous generation (so far as regards visible creatures, its 



