444 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1167 



the truth. I was commanded by the Holy Inqui- 

 sition that I should neither believe nor teach the 

 false doctrine of the motion of the earth and the 

 stationary attitude of the sun, because they are 

 contrary to the Holy Scriptures. In spite of it I 

 have written and caused to be printed a book in 

 which I teach this cursed doctrine and have 

 brought forth arguments in its favor. I have on 

 this account been declared a heretic and worthy 

 of contempt. 



In order now to redeem myself in the eyes of 

 every true Christian who with justice must hold me 

 in contempt, I forswear and curse the errors and 

 heresies referred to, and above all every other 

 error and every opinion which is contrary to the 

 teaching of the Church. Also I swear in future 

 never either in spoken word or in writing to ex- 

 press anything on account of which any one coidd 

 have me in like contempt, but I will, if I any- 

 where find or suspect heresy, reveal it at once to 

 the Holy Tribunal. 



It is not pleasant to dwell on the ex- 

 treme conditions wMeli determined the ma- 

 king of theories at this period and which 

 continued for fully a hundred years be- 

 yond the time of Galileo. For advocating 

 the Coperniean doctrine Giordano Bruno 

 was burned at the stake. More prudent, de 

 Maillet left his theories of nature to be pub- 

 lished only after his death and then with his 

 name disguised as Telliamed through print- 

 ing the letters in reverse order; while 

 Scheuehzer avoided persecution by describ- 

 ing as a human victim of the Noachian 

 deluge a gigantic fossil salamander, and thus 

 became the butt of succeeding generations. 

 Steno, "the wise Dane," through enjoying 

 the favor of a powerful Christian prince, 

 was more fortunate than most of his con- 

 temporaries, and has left us in his "Pro- 

 dromus," one of the great scientific lega- 

 cies of his age, now accessible to all through 

 the excellent translation from the Latin by 

 Professor Winter. 



Inductive methods of reasoning came to 

 play a larger part in the construction of 

 theories as the control by both branches of 

 the Christian church began to be relaxed. 

 The feeling of relief from restraint brought. 



however, a reaction in what was almost an 

 epidemic of theories characterized by a care- 

 lessness of construction and an insecurity 

 of foundation that were surpassed only by 

 the ardor and the vindictiveness with which 

 they were defended. The latter half of the 

 eighteenth and the first part of the nine- 

 teenth centuries was thus a period charac- 

 terized by notable controversies in science 

 which affected the greater part of Europe. 

 Theories were attacked or defended with al- 

 most fanatical bitterness, the aim of the ad- 

 vocates of each theory being apparently less 

 to arrive at the truth than to win in the 

 struggle. Geologists were divided into two 

 hostile camps over the origin of basalt ; the 

 Neptunists led by the Freiberg school of 

 "Werner in Germany claiming that it was 

 a chemical precipitate in the ocean, and the 

 Vulcanists who followed James Hutton of 

 Edinburgh, and believed the rock to be a 

 product of the earth's internal heat. Na- 

 tional boundaries were largely broken down 

 and some of the most pertinacious and 

 vindictive of the Wernerians were to be 

 found in the British Isles. 



On the other hand, the Neptunists had to 

 meet in Germany a formidable champion 

 of vulcanism in the poet Goethe, who, like 

 Dante five centuries earlier, had a keen in- 

 terest in science. For a time the bone of 

 contention was found in a small hill near 

 Eger in Bohemia, known as the Kammer- 

 biihl, a hill which Goethe stoutly main- 

 tained was ' ' a pocket edition of a volcano. ' ' 

 He suggested a simple method by which the 

 question might be settled, and proposed 

 that a tunnel should be driven into the hill 

 to its center. If the mountain was a vol- 

 cano, as he believed, a plug of basalt should 

 be found occupying its axis. A wealthy 

 friend, Count Casper von Sternberg, under- 

 took extensive excavations, which when 

 completed in 1837 abundantly proved the 

 correctness of the poet's position. 



Another great controversy was waged 



