JANUABT 27, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



131 



standard we know, the first the elimination 

 of the recognized sources of error, second 

 the repetition of the observations so that 

 the constancy of the phenomenon is as- 

 sured. We can not do more than allude 

 to this theme, which I must leave to the 

 future and to a more competent mind to 

 analyze and develop. 



To sum up : The method of science is 

 not special or peculiar to it, but only a 

 perfected application of our human re- 

 sources of observation and reflection — to 

 use the words of von Baer, the greatest 

 embryologist. To secure reliability the 

 method of science is first, to record every- 

 thing with which it deals, the phenomena 

 themselves and the inferences of the indi- 

 vidual investigators, and to record both 

 truly; second, to verify and correlate the 

 personal knowledges until they acquire im- 

 personal validity, which means in other 

 words that the conclusions approximate so 

 closely to the absolute truth that we can be 

 safely and profitably guided by them. The 

 method of science is no mystic process. On 

 the contrary, it is as easily comprehended 

 as it is infinitely difficult to use perfectly 

 and at its best the method supplies merely 

 available approximations to the absolute. 



"We set science upon the throne of imag- 

 ination, but we have crowned her with 

 modesty, for she is at once the reality of 

 human power and the personification of 

 human fallibility. 



Charles Sedgwick Minot 



Haevabd Medical School 



/ 



THE FORMATION OF OARBOHYDRATES IN 

 THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM^ 



The classical discovery of Woehler in 

 1828 first revealed to chemists the possi- 

 bility of the synthetic production of those 



'Address of the vice-president and chairman of 

 Section C — Chemistry — at the Minneapolis meet- 

 ing of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science. 



compounds which occur naturally in the 

 members of the animal and vegetable king- 

 doms. Woehler himself evidently realized 

 the importance of his discovery. Thus, in 

 a letter to his old teacher, Berzelius, he 

 wrote :^ 



You may remember how, while I was with you, 

 when trying to make ammonia combine with 

 cyanic acid, I always obtained a crystalline body 

 which gave the reactions of neither the one body 

 nor the other. I have just made this crystalline 

 body the subject of a little investigation, pre- 

 paring it by the action of ammonia on lead 

 cyanate and have discovered it to be nothing less 

 than urea. 



Then he significantly adds, "This may 

 be taken as an artificial production from 

 inorganic substance." 



The idea, however, that such compounds 

 could be formed only through the agency 

 of the vital forces of the living organism 

 was one of such long standing and was so 

 deeply established in the popular belief 

 that even the chemists contemporaneous 

 with Woehler were slow to grasp the full 

 significance of the discovery. Berzelius 

 himself was evidently not convinced, since 

 in his text-book published in 1837, nine 

 years after Woehler 's discovery, he ex- 

 pressed doubt as to the possibility of being 

 able to discover the differences between the 

 causes of reactions in the living organism 

 and those in the inorganic reahn. Like- 

 wise Gerhardt^ wrote seven years later 

 (1842) as follows: "I have shown that the 

 chemist works in a way altogether opposite 

 from living nature. The one burns, de- 

 stroys, operates by analysis. Vital force 

 alone operates by synthesis and recon- 

 structs the edifice torn down by chemical 

 forces. ' ' 



Other discoveries, however, of a nature 



^ " Berzelius- Woehler Briefwechsel," I., p. 206 ; 

 Armitage, " A History of Chemistry," p. 143. 



' Compt. rend., 15, p. 498. Bunge, " Text-book 

 of Organic Chemistry," p. 1. 



