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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLin. No. 1104 



effective ; while antiseptics and anesthetics, 

 the products of chemical research, hare 

 checked the spread of disease and relieved 

 pain. 



Throughout this revolution chemistry 

 has played and is still playing an important 

 part. It not only touches every branch of 

 industry, but it also reaches out into other 

 fields of knowledge and aids their develop- 

 ment. The geologist demands chemical 

 data ; physiology is in great part chemical ; 

 astronomy makes use of chemical discov- 

 eries whenever it analyzes the spectrum of 

 a nebula or star. 



In these preliminary remarks, I have sug- 

 gested only the applications of science to 

 the "betterment of man's estate"; but sup- 

 pose there had been no science to apply. 

 Suppose that no inquisitive mortals had 

 ever cared to study apparently useless 

 things, or to ponder over those obscure 

 relations which foreshadow the discovery 

 of natural laws. Civilization would have 

 advanced, doubtless ; but so slowly that cen- 

 turies or even millenniums of progress 

 could hardly have placed us on the level of 

 to-day. If our predecessors had only con- 

 sidered mere utility, the great inventions of 

 chemistry and electricity would never have 

 been made. These inventions were the out- 

 growth of investigations that were con- 

 ducted without thought of practical uses, 

 but were searchings after truth alone. 



History is full of paradoxes; and so I 

 must seem to contradict myself when I say 

 that the beginnings of science, the germs 

 from which it grew, were certainly utili- 

 tarian. Discoveries were made by accident ; 

 of metals, of medicines, of dyes, and, prob- 

 ably earlier still, of fire. Facts, useful to 

 mankind, were slowly collected, and in time, 

 by the crudest of mental processes, were 

 roughly classified. Similar things were 

 grouped together, simple relations were ob- 

 served; and these were the raw material 



with which science, as we understand it, 

 began. Arts were highly developed before 

 true science became possible. To trace 

 their advance from savagery to civilization 

 is one of the functions of anthropology. 



The science of chemistry deals primarily 

 with transformations of matter. Perhaps 

 the first of these to attract attention was 

 the change of wood to charcoal, but such 

 transformations were doubtless taken as a 

 matter of course, and gave rise to no seri- 

 ous reasoning. With the ancient Greeks, 

 however, and perhaps earlier in Egypt, 

 India and Crete, the accumulations of em- 

 pirical knowledge led to speculations, and 

 philosophers began to consider the absolute 

 nature of matter. The Greek speculations 

 are well known, but they were speculations 

 only and bore no useful fruit. It was only 

 after systematic experimentation had sup- 

 plied a real basis for reasoning that chem- 

 ical theory became possible. The Greeks 

 were acute philosophers, but experimental 

 work was the province of artisans, and so 

 fact and theory rarely came together. 



Slowly, however, a body of chemical doc- 

 trines developed, largely esoteric, and 

 known only to the initiated, who had very 

 practical aims in view. They sought to dis- 

 cover medicines and poisons, to transmute 

 base metals into gold, to find a universal 

 solvent and the elixir of life. Through 

 their efforts many useful compounds were 

 brought to light, but the problems they 

 sought to solve were unsolvable. Their dis- 

 coveries were the by-products of their re- 

 searches, not the main object of their de- 

 sires. Their speculations led to experi- 

 ments, and in this union of theory, even 

 false theory, with practise, modern chem- 

 istry began. By slow degrees empiricism 

 developed into scientific method, and as the 

 field of knowledge was enlarged, valid gen- 

 eralizations, true stimulators of rational re- 

 search, were framed. 



