74 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XII. No. 2I 



THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICANISTS. 



It is now two years since the sixth meeting of the International 

 Congress of Americanists was held at Turin. The next meeting 

 -is going to be held at Berlin from the 2d to the sth of October. 

 ^Before the adjournment of the Turin meeting an organizing com- 

 mittee was appointed, which, in agreement with the bureau of the 

 'Turin session, proposes the following subjects for the discussion of 

 ■the ■congress. The first day of the meeting will be devoted to 

 ^he history of the discovery of America, to the pre-Columbian his- 

 tory of the continent, and to American geology. Among the im- 

 portant subjects proposed for this day is a discussion of the early 

 history of Central America, more particularly of the nationalities liv- 

 ing there before the invasion of the Aztecs and other northern 

 tribes, and of the chronology of the invasions of uncivilized tribes 

 into Mexico. Professor Guido Cora of Turin will report on the 

 publication of documents referring to Columbus, incident to the 

 celebration of the fourth centenary of the discovery of America, 

 and on the origin of the name of America. i\'Ir. Gelcich, who re- 

 cently published in the Journal of the Berlin Geographical Society 

 an elaborate study of the life of Columbus, will report on recent 

 researches in this field. 



The second day will be devoted to the discussion of archseological 

 questions. Of course, the most prominent of these is the compari- 

 son of American and Asiatic relics; and the similarity and dissimi- 

 larity of American and Asiatic jade implements and pottery will be 

 discussed. 



On the third day the anthropology and ethnology of America 

 will be treated. Prof. R. Virchow will report on the anthropologic 

 classification of the ancient and modern inhabitants of America and 

 <3n a craniological atlas. It is to be hoped that this important 

 •work will be materially furthered by the researches of the congress. 

 Another problem not inferior in importance to the former is that of 

 the ethnological atlas of America, to which the Bureau of Ethnology 

 of Washington has made a contribution of the greatest value. 

 While the discussion of the congress will hardly add any thing to 

 the facts referring to North America collected tjy the scientists at 

 Washino'ton, our knowledge of the distribution of tribes of South 

 America will undoubtedly be materially increased. While these 

 two questions refer to material to be collected, a number of others 

 will treat the ethnological problems of our continent. Prof. A. 

 Bastian will illustrate the theory of geographical provinces by the 

 ethnology of America. Profs. C. Fritsch and Guido Cora will discuss 

 the unity of the American aborigines by studying their anthropo- 

 logical features, and the latter will compare the diluvial human re- 

 mains with those of the Indians. Professor Virchow will compare 

 the artificial deformations of skulls practised in America with those 

 found in Asia, Europe, and on the islands of the Pacific Ocean. 

 Another problem of general interest will be treated by A. Krause, 

 — the question of a connection between Asiatic races and the 

 natives of the north-west coast of America. 



The last day of the session will be devoted to linguistics and paleog- 

 raphy. The question will be discussed whether there e.xists any 

 characteristic feature common to all American languages. An- 

 other subject of general interest, upon which Prof. L. Steinthal will 

 make a report, is the question if any similarity exists between Poly- 

 nesian and north-west American languages. 



A detailed programme will be published about the middle of 

 September, and members are requested to send their manuscripts, 

 or the titles of their communications, to the bureau of the congress 

 before Sept. 15. The bureau is in the Royal Ethnological Museum 

 of Berlin, which will also form one of the principal attractions of 

 the coming congress. There are few collections in Europe which 

 represent the ethnology of America so well as that of Berlin, and 

 none has collections of equal value from the civilized races of an- 

 cient America. Fortunately the collections have been recently 

 transferred to a new and magnificent building, where they will be 

 accessible to the visitors of the congress. There are a number of old 

 collections from the central part of South America showing the 

 beautiful feather-work of the Indians of those regions, but the 

 student will principally be interested in Von den Steinen's col- 

 lections from the Xingu River. This distinguished explorer will 

 report to the congress on his recent expedition, from which he has 



just returned. The ancient civilization of Peru, which forms one 

 of the objects of discussion, is represented by valuable collections 

 in the museum, particularly the great collection of pottery and 

 gold ornaments of Macedo and that of Reiss and Stiibel, which 

 contains, besides specimens of pottery, numerous mummies, beau- 

 tiful samples of woven clothing, etc. The collections from Central 

 America date back to the travels of Alexander von Humboldt; but 

 since that time numerous new collections have been added, prin- 

 cipally those of Bastian and of Strebel. Last, we have to mention 

 the extensive collections from British Columbia and Alaska. 



It is to be expected that the approaching congress will materially 

 further the study of American archeeology and ethnology. 



THE HISTORY OF A DOCTRINE.' 



" Man, being the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and 

 understand so much, and so much only, as he has observed, in fact 

 or in thought, of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither 

 knows any thing nor can do any thing." — BaCON's Novum Orga- 

 nuiti, aphorism i. , 



In these days, when a man can take but a very little portion of 

 knowledge to be his province, it has become customary that your 

 president's address shall deal with some limited topic, with which 

 his own labors have made him familiar ; and accordingly I have 

 selected as my theme the history of our present views about radiant 

 energy, not only because of the intrinsic importance of the subject, 

 but because the study of this energy in the form of radiant heat is 

 one to which I have given special attention. 



Just as the observing youth, who leaves his own household to 

 look abroad for himself, comes back with the report that the world, 

 after all, is very like his own family, so may the speciaUst, when he 

 looks out from his own department, be surprised to find that, after 

 all, the history of the narrowest specialty is amazingly like that of 

 scientific doctrine in general, and contams the same lessons for us. 

 To find some of the most useful ones, it is important, however, to 

 look with our own eyes at the very words of the masters themselves, 

 and to take down the dusty copy of Newton, or Boyle, or Leslie, 

 instead of a modern abstract ; for, strange as it may seem, there is 

 something of great moment in the original that has never yet been 

 incorporated into any encyclopsedia, something really essential in 

 the words of the man himself which has not been indexed in any 

 text-book, and never will be. 



It IS not for us, then, here to-day, to try 



" How index-learning turns no student pale. 

 Yet holds the eel of science by the tail ; " 



but, on the contrary, to remark that from this index-learning, from 

 these histories of science and summaries of its progress, we are apt 

 to get wrong ideas of the very conditions on which this progress 

 depends. We often hear it, for instance, likened to the march of 

 an army toward some definite end ; but this, it has seemed to me, 

 is not the way science usually does move, but only the way it seems 

 to move in the retrospective view of the compiler, who probably 

 knows almost nothing of the real confusion, diversity, and retro- 

 grade motion of the individuals comprising the body, and only 

 shows us such parts of it as he, looking backward from his present 

 standpoint, now sees to have been in the right direction. 



I beheve this comparison of the progress of science to that of the 

 army which obeys an impulse from one head has more error than 

 truth in it ; and, though all similes are more or less misleading, I 

 would almost prefer to ask you to think rather of a moving crowd, 

 where the direction of the whole comes somehow from the inde- 

 pendent impulses of its individual members, not wholly unlike a pack 

 of hounds, which, in the long-run, perhaps catches its game, but 

 where, nevertheless, when at fault, each individual goes his own 

 way by scent, not by sight, some running back and some forward ; 

 where the louder-voiced bring many to follow them, nearly as often 

 in a wrong path as in a right one ; where the entire pack even has 

 been known to move off bodily on a false scent ; for this, if a less 

 dignified illustration, would be one which had the merit of hav- 



1 Address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Cleve- 

 land, O., Aug. 15, 1888, by Prof. S. P. Langley, the retiring president of the associa- 

 tion. 



