Sbptkmbke 12, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



405 



and Cape Town. It is the literal fact that 

 revelation and prophecy are to-day re- 

 served for science. 



The revelation of a single fundamental 

 fact, the discovery of one primary princi- 

 ple, by the intelligent application of a scien- 

 tific method in ■ research, may supply the 

 firm basis of important and far-reaching 

 prophecy. When Count Rumford reveal- 

 ed the fact of the identity of energies, mo- 

 lecular and mass, the almost axiomatic prin- 

 ciple that all energy is simply the product 

 of the weight into a function of velocity, 

 regardless of the magnitude of the mass or 

 the character of the movement, it was the 

 assertion of the intertransformability of all 

 the energies of movement, whether of stars 

 and planets and comets in their orbits, of a 

 flying shot, of a falling stone, of thermal 

 or electrical vibrations or of chemical com- 

 binations, whether of masses, of molecules, 

 of atoms or of the recently announced ele- 

 ments of the atoms, if such there prove to 

 be. That one fact of the identity of the 

 energies permitted the predictions of Car- 

 not, serving, later, as the foundation of a 

 new science. It justified the prophecy of 

 an all-comprehending science of Energetics, 

 as Rankine afterward denominated it, 

 which should serve as the common funda- 

 mental basis of all physical, chemical and 

 mechanical sciences; bringing molecular 

 and atomic motions and relations into the 

 same field with those of all telluric masses 

 and of every stellar world, comprehending 

 all phenomena of movement, whether of the 

 ether or of a universe gliding through a 

 greater infinity of space. 



II. 



The purposes of scientific research, im- 

 mediate or ultimate, are the revelation of 

 previously unknown facts and natural 

 phenomena, the discovery of that quali- 

 tative relation amongst them which is recog- 

 nized as the result of the operation of law, 



the foriuulation of the law, and its quanti- 

 tative connection with the facts and their 

 sequence. The immediate purpose is the 

 discovery of the facts and of the phe- 

 nomena and their quantitative measure- 

 ment ; the later purpose is their grouping, 

 their orderly arrangement, the expression 

 of the law of such arrangement and of 

 their interaction in the production of phe- 

 nomena and, finally, the construction of 

 systems of fact and law, quantitatively ex- 

 pressed, such as we designate as the sci- 

 ences, as, for example, the mathematical 

 and physical sciences, mechanics, ther- 

 modynamics, physics and chemistry, geol- 

 ogy and astronomy. Ultimately must come 

 the correlation of the sciences. 



All this means, first of all, the applica- 

 tion of scientific method to the advance- 

 ment of science itself.* It assumes the 

 planning of a scientific method of advance- 

 ment of science, of a scientific process of 

 development of each department and of the 

 complex whole which constitutes a pantol- 

 ogy, the breadth and the depth and the 

 limits of either the larger or the lesser in 

 which no man knows nor perhaps ever can 

 know or conceive. 



When knowledge, in greater or in lesser 

 amount, is thus acquired, classified and re- 

 corded, the outcome, whatever the intent of 

 its authors, will always be found to be the 

 advancement of humanity in material and, 

 no less, in intellectual and moral ways. In 

 fact, a material foundation is ahvays re- 

 quired for advancement in morals, in man- 

 ners, in culture and in happiness, by any 

 nation. Education in science, in litera- 

 ture, in language, in the professional basis 

 of a vocation, and in wisdom, learning, cul- 

 ture, morals and religion, is all one. 



* ' The Scientific Method of Advancement of 

 Science;' Vice-President's address, American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, St. 

 Louis Meeting, 1878, by R. H. Thurston. 



