Septembee .15, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



323 



science of planetary movement had not yet 

 been "bronght within any law at all" (as 

 we now use the term) in Tyeho Brahe's 

 time; but was the astronomy of Tyeho 

 Brahe socially inferior to that of Kepler? 

 It is difficult to fix the eye on such a ques- 

 tion without its being caught by the 

 splendor of Newton towering so near; and 

 the idea of a scale descending from that 

 great height is almost irresistibly suggested. 

 But in spite of this grave difficulty, I ask 

 whether there is of necessity any drop 

 whatever from the plane of Kepler, who 

 realized the laws, to that of Tyeho, who 

 never reached any suspicion of the true 

 laws, but had, nevertheless, such faith in 

 their existence that he cheerfully devoted 

 his life to labors of which he never reaped 

 the fruits? Is it not a dangerous doctrine 

 that the work done previous to the formu- 

 lation of a law is in any way inferior? 

 Take the ease of a man like Stephen 

 Groombridge, who made thousands of accu- 

 rate observations of stars in the early part 

 of last century. Fifty years later some- 

 thing of the value of his work began to 

 emerge from a comparison with later ob- 

 servations which showed what stars had 

 moved and how ; but it was not until nearly 

 a century had elapsed that something about 

 the laws of stellar movement was extracted 

 from his patient work, combined with a 

 repetition of similar works at Greenwich. 

 Then, with the skilful assistance of Mr. 

 Dyson and Mr. Eddington, Groombridge at 

 last came into the fruits of his labors ; but 

 had he been asked during his lifetime for 

 credentials in the shape of laws, on pain of 

 being classed as an inferior in the social sci- 

 entific scale, he would have been lamentably 

 unprepared. Or consider the case of M. 

 Teisserenc de Bort, when he began sending 

 up his balloons. "Show me your laws," 

 cries the mathematician. "But they are 

 ju^t what I hope to find," replies M. de 



Bort. "Tes, but surely you have formu- 

 lated some law you wish to test?" pursues 

 the invigilator. "How am I to give you 

 proper scientific rank unless you can pro- 

 duce at least a tentative law?" "On the 

 other hand, I wish to keep a perfectly open 

 mind," maintains M. de Bort. "Then I 

 fear I can not admit you to our class at 

 present; you must join the infants' class, 

 and I can only give you my best wishes 

 that you may reach maturity some day."" 

 Unperturbed, M. de Bort continues to sendi^ 

 up his balloons, and almost immediately 

 discovers the great fact about the iso- 

 thermal region which will be a permanent 

 factor in the meteorology of the future. 

 The mathematician is now ready to admit 

 him, as a worthy person who has found a 

 law about the constitution of the atmos- 

 phere. But was not the merit in sending 

 up the balloons whatever came of it? Is it, 

 not sometimes more courageous to take 

 risks of failure? The mathematician, safe 

 in his stronghold which possesses "prob- 

 ably in the highest degree attainable by the 

 human intellect the characteristics of per- 

 fect and necessary science" is like a man 

 who has inherited a good old-established 

 business, and he has a distaste for the 

 methods of those who have to try new ven- 

 tures. No doubt many who make such 

 trials fail; but, on the other hand, great 

 fortunes have been made in that way. 



It may seem, however, that too much is 

 being deduced from a single quoted opin- 

 ion, which may easily have been personal 

 and not representative. Let me, therefore, 

 take another which presents a different as- 

 pect of the same matter. I take the open- 

 ing words of Sir G. H. Darwin 's address to 

 this section at Birmingham in 1886. 



A mere catalogue of facts, however well ar^ 

 ranged, has never led to any important scientific 

 generalization. For in any subjects the facts are 

 so numerous and many-sided that they only lead 



