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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 391. 



or nearly so, throughout the Dark and 

 and Middle Ages. During this period of 

 mental stagnation, authority was the 

 watchword of the learned. All knowledge 

 was supposed to have been already dis- 

 covered, and the efforts of the schoolmen 

 were devoted to the application of this 

 body of truth to life and conduct. This 

 mediaeval point of view has been quaintly 

 and aptly ])ut by Chaucer : 



Out of olde feldies, as man saieth, 



Comitli all this newe corne from yere to yearn; 



And out of olde bokis, in good faithe, 



Comitli all this newe science that memie learn. 



With the Renaissance began a new 

 epoch, an epoch in the midst of which we 

 are still living. It marked, as has been 

 well said, ' the liberation of the reason from 

 a dungeon, the double discovery of the 

 outer and inner world.' The study of the 

 humanities, which was an incident of the 

 Renaissance, rendered available to modem 

 men the wisdom of the ancients. But much 

 of the old laiowledge was found to be spuri- 

 ous when examined with the new light, and 

 even the authority of Aristotle, the demi- 

 god of the scholastics, was discredited. 

 Nothing henceforth was to be accepted on 

 trust, and the injunction to 'prove all 

 things' became the watchword of the 

 learned. 



Although the Renaissance marked the 

 regeneration of philosophy, of criticism, 

 and in general of the whole process of 

 thought, it especially denoted the birth of 

 the physical and natural sciences, and 

 hence their rise and progress may be taken 

 as best illustrating the working of the new 

 spirit of research. Roger Bacon in the 

 thirteenth century protested vainly against 

 the despotism of Aristotle, and advocated a 

 new and fruitful learning which should be 

 based upon experience. In the two cen- 

 turies which followed, those scholars de- 

 scribed by Whewell as the 'Practical Re- 

 formers,' working in their primitive 



laboratories, established a sound basis for 

 a future natural philosophy. One of these, 

 Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), both a 

 practical and a theoretical philosopher, an- 

 ticipated modern science in his remark: 

 "The interpreter of the artifices of nature 

 is experience, who is never deceived. "We 

 must begin from experiment and try to 

 discover the reason." Telesio (1508- 

 1588), called by Francis Bacon 'primus 

 hominum novorum,' said: "The construc- 

 tion of the world and the magnitude and 

 nature of the bodies in it are not to be 

 investigated by reasoning, as was done by 

 the ancients; but they are to be appre- 

 hended by the sense and collected from the 

 things themselves." These were some, 

 but not nearly all, of the forerunners of 

 Francis Bacon (1561-1626) who by his 

 writings, and especially by his 'Novum 

 Organum,' elaborated in detail a method 

 of research, the principles of which had 

 been laid down by his predecessors. 



From the overturning of the authority 

 of Aristotle and the laying down of a se- 

 cure basis for the advancement of knowl- 

 edge, it was but a step to the inauguration 

 of organized research, the aspect of the 

 question to which I wish to invite your 

 attention somewhat more in detail. 



The chief agencies of modern organized 

 research are (1) the learned societies and 

 (2) the universities. The former receive 

 and publish research papers; the latter 

 superintend and direct investigators and 

 publish results. To these should properly 

 be added the various journals which have 

 been established and carried on by private 

 effort. It is a significant fact that the 

 establishment of modern learned societies 

 coincides closely in time with the Renais- 

 sance movement. Telesio, mentioned above, 

 established one of the earliest mathematico- 

 physical' societies — the Academy of Cos- 

 enza. Other Italian societies of similar 

 scope were founded in Rome in 1603, in 



