TBANSACT10NS OF THE SECTIONS. 



Section A.— MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



President op the Section. — Professor H. H. Turner, D.Sc, 



D.C.L., F.R.S. 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 31. 

 The President delivered the following Address :— 



The Characteristics of the Observational Sciences. 



It will doubtless startle my audience to hear that this Section has only once 

 in its history been addressed by an astronomical President upon an astronomical 

 topic. I hasten to admit that I am not using the term astronomical in its widest 

 sense. Huxley once declared that there were only two sciences, Astronomy and 

 Biology, and it is recorded that ' the company ' (which happened to be that of the 

 Royal Astronomical Society Club) ' agreed with him.' One may agree with the 

 company in assenting to the proposition in the sense in which it is obviously 

 intended -without losing the right to use the name astronomy in a more restricted 

 sense when necessary ; and at present I use it in its classical sense. At Brighton, 

 in 1872, Dr. De La Rue addressed Section A on Astronomical Photography in 

 words which are still worthy of attention, though they are all but forty years old ; 

 and this is the only instance I can find in the annals of the Section. There 

 have, of course, been occasional astronomical Presidents such as Airy, Lord Rosse, 

 and Dr. Robinson, but these presided in early days before the Address existed, 

 or when it was brief and formal ; and the only allusions to astronomical matters 

 were the statements, by Robinson and Airy, of what the Association had done in 

 subsidising the reduction of Lalande's observations and the Greenwich lunar 

 observations. In 1887 Sir Robert Ball occupied this chair, but he selected from 

 his ample scientific wardrobe the costume of a geometer, and left his astronomical 

 dress at home. A great man whose death was announced almost as I was writing 

 these words, Dr. Johnstone Stoney, spoke (in 1879 at Sheffield) of the valuable 

 training afforded by the study of mechanics and of chemistry, with that keen 

 insight which made him so valuable a member of our Section. Other Presidents 

 whom we have been glad to welcome as astronomers at certain times and seasoi s 

 did not choose the occasion of their presidency for any very definite manifesta- 

 tion of astronomical sympathy. 



The Addresses of Sir George Darwin (in 1886) and of Professor Love (in 191)7) 

 on the past history of our earth certainly have an astronomical bearing, but if 

 we distinguish between the classical astronomy and its modern expansions they 

 would be assigned to the latter rather than to the former; and so do the few 

 astronomical allusions in Professor Schuster's Address at Edinburgh in 1892. 

 Even if we include, instead of excluding, all doubtful cases, there will still 

 appear a curious neglect of astronomy by Section A in the last half-century, all 

 the more curious when it is remarked that the neglect does not extend to the 

 1911. x 



