CHAPTER XIV 



NATURAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH 



CENTURY 



The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mark the period in 

 which, owing to the use of the several vernacular languages of Europe 

 in the place of the medieval Latin, thought became nationalized. 

 Thus it was that . . . people could make journeys of exploration in 

 the region of thought from one country to another, bringing home 

 with them new and fresh, ideas. Such journeys . . . were those of 

 Voltaire to England in 1726 ... of Adam Smith in 1765 to France. 



M erz. 



IN the preface to one of his volumes of essays, Lord Morley 

 speaks of the eighteenth century as the scientific Renaissance. 

 Such it undoubtedly was, for it was in this century and es- 

 pecially in its latter half, that chemistry, geology, botany, zoology* 

 and physics, began to make deep impression on the learned world, 

 while astronomy and mathematics ventured upon bolder and 

 more far-reaching generalizations than they had ever before made. 

 Science as a special discipline, or as a branch of learning worthy 

 of the highest consideration, had as yet scarcely begun to make 

 itself felt, but the names of Newton and Descartes were frequently 

 heard in the salons of Paris and keen observers like Voltaire per- 

 ceived the rising of a new tide in the affairs of men. A growth of 

 popular interest might naturally have been expected after the 

 great discoveries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What 

 was not looked for was the concurrence of those political and 

 social upheavals ever since rightly known as revolutions ; viz. the 

 French Revolution, the American Revolution and, probably most 

 important of all, the Industrial Revolution. 



CHEMISTRY : DECLINE OF THE PHLOGISTON THEORY. We 

 have already touched upon the work of Boerhaave and Hales 

 in the field of organic chemistry, so-called, and may now pass on 



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