TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. ' 855 



Section G.— MECHANICAL SCIENCE. 

 Peesident of the Section — Sir Alexander Binnie, M.Inst.C.E., F.G.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



Looking back at the Addresses of my many distinguished predecessors in this 

 chair, I find that, devoting their attention as they have done either to the general 

 progress of engineering knowledge or to those particular parts of it that have 

 engaged their personal study, the possible field of observation has become some- 

 what circumscribed. Every one, I think, must by this time be fairly well acquainted 

 with the progress made in our work during the present century or during the 

 reign of Her Majesty the Queen. 



But although this detailed examination of progressive advancement may appear 

 at first sight to be exhausted, yet it may be not altogether unprofitable if we 

 endeavour for a few minutes to consider how, and under what circumstances, that 

 advancement has alone become possible. 



Living as we do at the end of the nineteenth century, and surrounded as we 

 have all of us been from our earliest years with a march of progress unequalled 

 in the world's annals, we are apt to assume that the circumstances which surround 

 us, the general attitude of the scientific mind, and our conception of nature and 

 its phenomena, are things which come to us by nature as our birthright, forgetting 

 that they are the result of thousands of years of work and thought among some 

 of the greatest minds that the world has ever produced. 



It may not therefore be displeasing to the audience which I see before me if 

 in an imperfect way I attempt to lay before them some, at all events, of the salient 

 facts which lead up to our present outlook on the scientific matters with which 

 our profession deals. 



We as civil engineers define our profession as being ' the art of directing the 

 great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.' Conse- 

 quently our success or otherwise will depend on the estimate we may form of 

 nature as a whole, and of those great sources of power which it places at our 

 disposal. Undoubtedly in the history of the world there has never been a period 

 when the study of nature has been so open and free from all prejudices of any kind 

 whatever as it has been during the present century ; nor, perhaps, with but few 

 exceptions, has there ever been in any age or country a time when nature and her 

 laws have been investigated with so pure and steadfast an aim after actual truth 

 without the mind being prejudiced by authority or preconceived idpas derived 

 from those great departments of human thought which deal more particularly 

 with matters of faith, morals, and religion. 



This equanimity of mind in which we now approach all subjects relating to 

 fciencs has not, J Deed bardJj s(iy, been the case ifl the past. Some persons may 



