236 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. IY., No. 84. 



electrical decompositions and of thermo-chemical 

 data, or from even millions of the customary static 

 chemical equations, would be like hoping to learn the 

 nature of gravitation by laboriously weighing every 

 moving object on the earth's surface, and recording 

 the foot-pounds of energy given out when it fell. 

 The simplest quantitative measure of gravity is, as 

 every one knows, to determine it as the acceleration 

 of a velocity: when we know the value of g, we are 

 forever relieved, in the problem of falling bodies, 

 from the necessity of weighing heterogeneous objects 

 at the earth's surface, for they will all experience the 

 same acceleration. May there not be something like 

 this grand simplification to be discovered for chemi- 

 cal changes also ? 



The study of the speed of reaction has but just 

 begun. It is a line of work surrounded with unusual 

 difficulties, but it contains a rich store of promise. 

 All other means for measuring the energies of chein- 

 ism seem to have been tried except this: is it not, 

 therefore, an encouraging fact, that to the chemists 

 of the nineteenth century is left for exploration the 

 great fruitful field of the true dynamics of the atom, 

 the discovery of a time rate for the attractions due 

 to affinity? 



THE MISSION OF SCIENCE. 1 



After thanking the section for the honor con- 

 ferred upon him by electing him their chairman, and 

 referring to the success of the meeting of the British 

 association at Montreal, Professor Thurston an- 

 nounced as the subject of his address, ' The mission 

 of science.' He spoke of his address, as vice-president 

 at St. Louis in 1S78, on the philosophic method of 

 the advancement of science, in which he had called 

 attention to the need of specialists, amply supplied 

 with the proper means, to do the work of observing, 

 collecting, and co-ordinating the results of observa- 

 tion. As an all-important factor in this the modern 

 system of scientific investigation, he had spoken of 

 the men who have given, and who are still generously 

 and liberally giving, material assistance by their splen- 

 did contributions to the scientific departments of our 

 colleges and of our technical schools. 



It may well be asked, What is the use, and what is 

 the object, of systematically gathering knowledge, 

 and of constructing a great, an elaborate system, hav- 

 ing the promotion of science as its sole end and aim? 

 What is the mission of science ? The great fact 

 that material prosperity is the fruit of science, and 

 that other great truth, that, as mankind is given op- 

 portunity for meditation and for culture, the higher 

 attributes of human character are given development, 

 are the best indications of the nature of the real mis- 

 sion of science, and of the correctness of the conclu- 

 sion that the use and the aim of scientific inquiry 



1 Abstract of an address to the section of mechanical science 

 of the American association for the advancement of science at 

 Philadelphia, Sept. 4, by Prof. R. H. Thurston of Stevens insti- 

 tute, Hoboken, N.J., vice-president of the section. 



are to be sought in the region beyond and above the 

 material world to which those studies are confined. 



It being granted that the mission of science is the 

 amelioration of man's condition, it becomes of impor- 

 tance to consider the way in which our knowledge is 

 increased. While the scientific method of advance- 

 ment of science is evidently that which will yield the 

 greatest returns, it is not the fact that we are indebted 

 to such philosophic methods for the production of the 

 modern sciences. The inventor of gunpowder lived 

 before Lavoisier; the mariner's compass pointed the 

 seaman to the pole before magnetism took form as a 

 science; the steam-engine was invented and set at 

 work, substantially in all essential details as we know 

 it to-day, before a science of thermo-dynamics was 

 dreamed of. 



But all this is of the past. Science has attained a 

 development, a stature, and a power, that give her 

 the ability to assume her place in the great scheme of 

 civilization. Hereafter she will direct and will lead. 

 The blind, scheming ways of the older inventor will 

 give place to the exact determination, by scientific 

 methods, of the most direct and most efficient way 

 of reaching a defined end, — methods now daily 

 practised by the engineer in designing his ma- 

 chinery. 



It is only in modern times, and since the old spirit 

 of contempt for art, and of reverence for the non- 

 utilitarian element in science, has become nearly ex- 

 tinguished, and since our systems of education have 

 begun to include the study of physical science, that 

 we have had what is properly called a division of 

 'applied science.' In the days of classical learning, 

 science was only valued as it developed a system of 

 purely intellectual gymnastics. Archimedes was 

 the most perfect prototype, in those days, of the 

 modern physicist and mechanician, of the scientific 

 man and engineer; yet he, and all his contempora- 

 ries, esteemed his discovery of the relation between 

 the volumes of the cylinder and the sphere more 

 highly than that of the method of determining the 

 specific gravity of a solid, or the composition of an 

 alloy, and deemed the quadrature of the parabola a 

 greater achievement than the theory of the lever 

 which might 'move the world.' His enumeration of 

 the sands of the seashore was looked upon as a 

 nobler accomplishment than the invention of the 

 catapult, or of the pump, which, twenty-one centu- 

 ries after his death, still bears his name. 



No system of applied science could exist among 

 people who had no conception of the true mission of 

 science; and it was not until many centuries had 

 passed, that mankind reached such a position, in their 

 slow progress toward a real civilization, that it became 

 possible to effect that union of science and the arts 

 which is the distinguishing characteristic of the age 

 in which we live. 



In illustration of the gradual evolution and growth 

 of correct theory, and of this slow development of 

 rational views, of the methods of scientific deduction, 

 and of the invariably tardy progress from a beginning 

 distinguished by defective knowledge and inaccurate 

 logic, in the presence of what are later seen to be 



