262 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1315 



for a moment they should stop other activities 

 in order that they might weigh the magnitude 

 of their indebtedness to the scientific societies 

 of the past. It wovild reduce them below any 

 level of humility if they compared the service 

 of the contemporary societies with those of 

 their ancestors, from whom they are separated 

 by many centuries. 



What a glorious record of devotion, sacri- 

 fice, and heroism, is the history of the early 

 days of the Aceademie del Cimento of Italy, 

 of the Eoyal Society of England, of the 

 Academie des Sciences of Prance, of the 

 Scientific Societies of Germany. 



Somewhere remote in your memory, vaguely 

 and hazily, perhaps, there still lingers a 

 recollection that the bearers of the illustrious 

 names of Copernicus, Gallileo, Toricelli, nay 

 even of Newton, were viewed by their con- 

 temporaries with profound suspicion, as dan- 

 gerous troublemakers; and if the vocabulary 

 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had 

 been as luxuriant as is ours today, those 

 illustrious men might have been disposed of 

 as Bolsheviki. 



In the days when those societies came to 

 life, experimentation was a dangerous busi- 

 ness. Scholasticism, philosophy, and all classes 

 of organized society, nobility, gentry, clergy 

 were hostile to experimental science. And 

 in spite of these obstacles the result of the 

 efforts of the great pioneers of the seven- 

 teenth and of the early eighteenth centuries 

 were preserved and further developed, and 

 made the foundation of our present civiliza- 

 tion. In a great measure the success was 

 attained through the activities of the learned 

 societies of those days. 



One is filled with astonishment and admira- 

 tion reading about the great vision of the 

 founders of those academies. They saw 

 clearly all the needs of the new science and 

 of the new times and they grouped together 

 by joint effort to accomplish what they cotild 

 not do individually. Indeed, so much were 



in affiliation -with the American Biochemical So- 

 ciety, in the lecture room of the department of 

 ■biochemistry in the medical school of the Univer- 

 Bity of Cincinnati, December 30, 1919. 



they permeated by their desire to serve sci- 

 ence, rather than the individual scientist, 

 that often the personalities of the investiga- 

 tors were completely submerged in that of the 

 institution as a whole. In the Accademia del 

 Cimento, as an instance, all the work was 

 published anonymously in the name of the 

 academy. This is perhaps the most sublime 

 example of self-obliteration in the service of 

 an ideal ever known in the history of science. 



This oldest of all European societies more 

 than any other emphasized the preeminence 

 of experiment, of creation of instruments, 

 establishment of standards of measurements, 

 over theory and hypotheses. " Probando et 

 Eeprobando " was their motto. And indeed 

 the academicians have discharged their task 

 admirably. The munber of instruments they 

 constructed is endless, the scientific facts 

 they discovered still stand among the foimda- 

 tions of our present sciences. And Poggen- 

 dorf, referring to the Accademia del Cimento, 

 says : " Pew bodies have so well fulfilled their 

 aims . . . ," and further, " we stand to-day on 

 their shoulders." 



The aims of the Accademia del Cimento 

 were adopted by the younger European Society 

 which later received its charter from Charles 

 H. as the Eoyal Society of England. 



This society furthered all the ambitions of 

 its Italian forerunner and amplified on it by 

 its program of social activities. As the 

 Cimento, the members of this society were 

 encouraged through cooperation to improve 

 the tools of the scientists. Thus their mem- 

 bers perfected the telescope, devised a spring 

 for watches, improved the microscope. They 

 were constructing laboratories, organizing col- 

 lections, and by every means were improving 

 the equipment and facilitating the task of the 

 investigator. In a letter to Boyle, Hooke 

 writes : 



We are now undertaking several good things, 

 such as the collection of a repository, the setting 

 up of a chemical laboratory, a mechanical opera- 

 tory, an astronomical observatory, and an optic 

 chamber. 



The great effort made by the society to 

 furnish the English workers with the in- 



