374 



NA TURE 



[August 17, 1905 



craft were to be sternly administered for many a year to 

 come. It was an age that was pulsating with life and 

 illuminated by fancy, but the life was the life of strong 

 action and the fancy was the fancy of ideal imagination ; 

 men did not lend themselves to sustained and abstract 

 thought concerning the nature of the universe. When we 

 contemplate the spirit that such a state of knowledge 

 might foster towards scientific learning, and when we 

 recall the world into which Bacon's treatise was launched, 

 we can well be surprised at his far-reaching views, and 

 we can marvel at his isolated wisdom. ■ 



Let me select a few specimens of his judgments, chosen 

 solely in relation to our own subjects. When he says : 



" .'\11 true and fruitful natural philosophy hath a double 

 scale or ladder, ascendant and descendant, ascending from 

 experiments to the invention of causes, and descending 

 from causes to the invention of new experiments ; there- 

 fore I judge it most requisite that these two parts be 

 severally considered and handled " — 



he is merely expounding, in what now is rather archaic 

 phrase, the principles of the most ambitious investigations 

 in the natural philosophy of subsequent centuries. When 

 he speaks of 



" the operation of the relative and adventive characters 

 of essences, as quantity, similitude, diversity, possibility, 

 and the rest ; with this distinction and provision, that they 

 be handled as they have efficacv in nature, and not 

 logically " — 



I seem to hear the voice of the applied mathematician 

 warning the pure mathematician off the field. When, 

 after having divided natural philosophy into physic and 

 metaphysic (using these words in particular meanings, 

 and including mathematics in the second of the divisions), 

 he declares 



" physic should contemplate that which is inherent in 

 matter, and therefore transitory, and metaphysic that which 

 is abstracted and fixed ; . . .' physic describeth the causes 

 of things, but the variable or respective causes ; and 

 metaphysic the fixed and constant causes " — 

 there comes before my mind the army of physicists of the 

 present day, who devote themselves unwear'vingly to the 

 properties of matter and willinglv cast as'ide elaborate 

 arguments and calculations. When he argues that 

 " many parts of nature can neither be invented with 

 sufficient subtilty, nor demonstrated with sufficient per- 

 spicuity, nor accommodated unto use with sufficient 

 dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the mathe- 

 matics " — 



he might be describing the activity of subsequent gener- 

 ations of philosophers, astronomers, and engineers. And 

 m the last place (for my extracts must have some end), 

 when he expresses the opinion 



" that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent 

 use of the pure mathematics, in that thev do remedy and 

 cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. 

 For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it ; if too wander- 

 ing, they fix it ; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract 

 it; . . ., in the mathematics, that which is collateral and 

 mtervenient is no less worthy than that which is principal 

 and intended " — 



I seem to hear an advocate for the inclusion of elementary 

 mathematics in any scheme of general education. At the 

 same time, I wonder what Bacon, who held such an 

 exalted estimate of pure mathematics in its grey dawn, 

 would have said by way of ampler praise of "the subject 

 in its fuller day. 



It was a splendid vision of inductive science as of other 

 parts of learning ; it contained a revelation of the course 

 of progress through the centuries to come. Yet the facts 

 of to-day are vaster than the vision of that long-ago 

 yesterday, and human activity has far outstripped the 

 dreams of Bacon's opulent imagination. He was the 

 harbinger (premature in many respects it must be con- 

 fessed, but still the harbinger) of a new era. At a time 

 when we are making a new departure in the fulfilment 

 of the purpose of our charter, which requires us "to 

 promote the intercourse of those who cultivate Science 



NO. 1868, VOL. 72] 



in different parts of the British Empire," our Association 

 for the Advancement of Science may pause for a moment 

 to gaze upon the vision revealed three centuries ago in the 

 " Advancement of Learning " by a philosopher whose 

 influence upon the thought of the world is one of the 

 glories of our nation. 



I have implied that Bacon's discourse was in advance 

 of its age, so far as England was concerned. Individuals 

 could make their mark in isolated fashion. Thus Harvey, 

 in his hospital work in London, discovered the circulation 

 of the blood ; Napier, away on his Scottish estates, invented 

 logarithms ; and Horrocks, in the seclusion of a Lancashire 

 curacy, w-as the first to observe a transit of \'enus. But 

 for more than half a century the growth of physical science 

 was mainly due to workers on the continent of Europe. 

 Cfalileo was making discoveries in the mechanics of solids 

 and fluids, and, specially, he was building on a firm 

 foundation the fabric of the system of astronomy, hazarded 

 nearly a century before by Copernicus ; he still was to 

 furnish, by bitter experience, one of the most striking 

 examples in the history of the world that truth is stronger 

 than dogma. Kepler was gradually elucidating the laws 

 of planetary motion, of which such significant use w'as 

 made later by Newton ; and Descartes, by his creation of 

 analytical geometry, was yet to effect such a constructive 

 revolution in mathematics that he might not unfairly be 

 called, the founder of modern mathematics. In England 

 the times were out of scientific joint ; the political distrac- 

 tions of the Stuart troubles, and the narrow theological 

 bitterness of the Commonwealth, made a poor atmosphere 

 for the progress of scientific learning, which was confined 

 almost to a faithful few. The fidelity of those few, how- 

 ever, had its reward ; it was owing to their steady con- 

 fidence and to their initiative that the Royal Society of 

 London was founded in 1662 by Charles II. .'\t that epoch, 

 science (to quote the words of a picturesque historian) 

 became the fashion of the day. Great Britain began to 

 contribute at least her fitting share to the growing know- 

 ledge of Nature ; and her scientific activity in the closing 

 part of the seventeenth century was a realisation, 

 wonderful and practical, of a part of Bacon's dream. 

 Undoubtedly the most striking contribution made in that 

 period is Newton's theory of gravitation, as expounded 

 in his " Principia," published in 1687. 



That century also saw the discovery of the fluxional 

 calculus by Newton, and of the differential calculus by 

 Leibnitz. These discoveries provided the material for one 

 of the longest and most deadening controversies as to 

 priority in all the long history of those tediously barren 

 occupations ; unfortunately they are dear to minds which 

 cannot understand that a discovery should be used, 

 developed, amplified, but should not be a cause of envy, 

 quarrel, or controversy. Let me say, incidentally, that the 

 controversy had a malign influence upon the study of 

 mathematics as pursued in England. 



.Also, the undulatory theory of light found its first 

 systematic, if incomplete, exposition in the work of 

 Huygens before the century was out. But Newton had an 

 emission theory of his own, and so the undidatory theory 

 of Huygens found no favour in England until rather more 

 than a hundred years later ; the researches of Thomas 

 Young established it on a firm foundation. 



Having thus noted some part of the stir in scientific 

 life which marked the late years of the seventeenth century, 

 let me pass to the second of our centenaries ; it belongs 

 to the name of Edmond Halley. Quite independently of 

 his achievement connected with the year 1705 to which 

 I am about to refer, there are special reasons for honour- 

 ing Halley's name in this section at our meeting in South 

 Africa. When a young man of twenty-one he left England 

 for St. Helena, and there, in the years 1676-1678, he laid 

 the foundations of stellar astronomy for the Southern 

 Hemisphere ; moreover, in the course of his work he there 

 succeeded in securing the first complete observation of a 

 transit of Mercury, .^fter his return to England, the next 

 few years of his life were spent in laying science under a 

 special debt that can hardly be over-appreciated. He 

 placed himself in personal relation with Newton, pro- 

 pounded to him questions and offered information ; and 

 it is now a commonplace statement that Halley's questions 

 and suggestions caused Newton to write the " Principia." 



