EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 145 



ticipate in the experiments, they were conducted in open session of 

 the Academy, thus guarding against the danger of any one member 

 obtaining for his exclusive personal use a possible elixir of life. A 

 wide range of the animal and vegetable kingdom, including cats, dogs, 

 and birds of various species, were thus analyzed. The practice of 

 dissection was introduced on a large scale. That of the cadaver of an 

 elephant occupied several sessions, and was of such interest that the 

 monarch himself was a spectator. 



To the same epoch with the formation and first work of these two 

 bodies belongs the invention of a mathematical method which in its 

 importance to the advance of exact science may be classed with the 

 invention of the alphabet in its relation to the progress of society at 

 large. The use of algebraic symbols to represent quantities had its 

 origin before the commencement of the new era, and gradually grew 

 into a highly developed form during the first two centuries of that 

 era. But this method could represent quantities only as fixed. It is 

 true that the elasticity inherent in the use of such symbols permitted 

 of their being applied to any and every quantity; yet, in any one 

 application, the quantity was considered as fixed and definite. But 

 most of the magnitudes of nature are in a state of continual variation; 

 indeed, since all motion is variation, the latter is a universal charac- 

 teristic of all phenomena. No serious advance could be made in the 

 application of algebraic language to the expression of physical phe- 

 nomena until it could be so extended as to express variation in quan- 

 tities, as well as the quantities themselves. This extension, worked 

 out independently by Newton and Leibnitz, may be classed as the 

 most fruitful of conceptions in exact science. With it the way was 

 opened for the unimpeded and continually accelerated progress of the 

 last two centuries. 



The feature of this period which has the closest relation to the 

 purpose of our coming together is the seemingly unending subdivision 

 of knowledge into specialties, many of which are becoming so minute 

 and so isolated that they seem to have no interest for any but their 

 few pursuers. Happily science itself has afforded a corrective for its 

 own tendency in this direction. The careful thinker will see that in 

 these seemingly diverging branches common elements and common 

 principles are coming more and more to light. There is an increasing 

 recognition of methods of research, and of deduction, which are com- 

 mon to large branches, or to the whole of science. We are more and 

 more recognizing the principle that progress in knowledge implies its 

 reduction to more exact forms, and the expression of its ideas in 

 language more or less mathematical. The problem before the organ- 

 izers of this Congress was, therefore, to bring the sciences together, 

 and seek for the unity which we believe underlies their infinite 

 diversity. 



