SUMMARY OF FOUR CENTURIES OF SCIENCE. 273 



just mentioned had seen only the fringe of space. 2. The 

 next distinguishing feature of the XVIIIth century is that 

 it witnesses the appearance of scientific GEOLOGY, ushered in 

 by Hutton; of scientific CHEMISTRY, ushered in by Lavoisier; 

 of ELECTRICITY, ushered in by Franklin and Volta; of THER- 

 MOLOGY (heat), ushered in by Black four great branches 

 rich in material and philosophical consequences. 3. Another 

 character of the age lies in the rapid growth of BIOLOGY 

 in all its branches : Linnaeus classifies, Buffon describes, 

 Boerhaave analyses chemically, Haller anatomically, Hunter 

 comparatively, and Lamarck throws his luminous philosophy 

 over it all ascending to the origins of life. Thus the 

 XVIIIth century inaugurated two natural sciences of deep 

 interest : the study of the earth, and the study of the 

 organic world on the earth. 4. A fourth characteristic is 

 given to the century by the sudden appearance of STEAM 

 MACHINERY, the combined wonder of Watt and Black a 

 new agent of immeasurable variety and power, the creator 

 of wealth on a large scale, and more, the most beneficent 

 destroyer of misery, poverty, wretchedness among the toil- 

 ing millions of mankind one, therefore, of the greatest 

 blessings of the modern era; so that the XVIIIth century, 

 which was beyond all things a humanitarian age, contrived 

 also by a happy coincidence an irresistible means of giving 

 effect to its main idea. 5. The same age is also marked 

 by another feature which embodies the result of profound 

 investigations and scientific interaction, namely, the dis- 

 covery of numerous PHYSICAL LAWS not, indeed, so striking 

 as those discovered in the XVI Ith century, but valuable 

 and important all the same some of the laws of heat, of 

 compressibility, of magnetism, of electricity, of sound, of 

 light, of chemical action, of biology, besides the invention of 

 numerous apparatus and instruments illustrating those laws. 

 6. Finally, as a synthetical result of the enlargement of so 

 many branches, but mainly of mathematics, astronomy, 

 mechanics, and physics, the century ends with the broaching 

 and formulation of a THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE by Laplace, 

 which later investigations to a great extent substantiate, 

 and prove, despite the mysteries it involves, to be one of 



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