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A HISTORY OF SCIENCE - VOLUME 1
A HISTORY OF SCIENCE - VOLUME 1 HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS IN FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME I.
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE
BOOK I.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. PREHISTORIC SCIENCE
CHAPTER II. EGYPTIAN SCIENCE
CHAPTER III. SCIENCE OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
CHAPTER IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET
CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCIENCE
CHAPTER VI. THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ITALY
CHAPTER VII. GREEK SCIENCE IN THE EARLY ATTIC PERIOD
CHAPTER VIII. POST-SOCRATIC SCIENCE AT ATHENS
CHAPTER IX. GREEK SCIENCE OF THE ALEXANDRIAN OR HELLENISTIC
PERIOD
CHAPTER X. SCIENCE OF THE ROMAN PERIOD
CHAPTER XI. A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE AT CLASSICAL SCIENCE
APPENDIX
A HISTORY OF SCIENCE
BOOK I
Should the story that is about to be unfolded be found to lack
interest the writers must stand convicted of unpardonable lack
of art. Nothing but dulness in the telling could mar the story
for in itself it is the record of the growth of those ideas that
have made our race and its civilization what they are; of ideas
instinct with human interest vital with meaning for our race;
fundamental in their influence on human development; part and
parcel of the mechanism of human thought on the one hand and of
practical civilization on the other. Such a phrase as
"fundamental principles" may seem at first thought a hard saying
but the idea it implies is less repellent than the phrase itself
for the fundamental principles in question are so closely linked
with the present interests of every one of us that they lie
within the grasp of every average man and woman--nay of every
well-developed boy and girl. These principles are not merely the
stepping-stones to culture the prerequisites of knowledge--they
are in themselves an essential part of the knowledge of every
cultivated person.
It is our task not merely to show what these principles are but
to point out how they have been discovered by our predecessors.
We shall trace the growth of these ideas from their first vague
beginnings. We shall see how vagueness of thought gave way to
precision; how a general truth once grasped and formulated was
found to be a stepping-stone to other truths. We shall see that
there are no isolated facts no isolated principles in nature;
that each part of our story is linked by indissoluble bands with
that which goes before and with that which comes after. For the
most part the discovery of this principle or that in a given
sequence is no accident. Galileo and Keppler must precede Newton.
Cuvier and Lyall must come before Darwin;--Which after all is
no more than saying that in our Temple of Science as in any
other piece of architecture the foundation must precede the
superstructure.
We shall best understand our story of the growth of science if we
think of each new principle as a stepping-stone which must fit
into its own particular niche; and if we reflect that the entire
structure of modern civilization would be different from what it
is and less perfect than it is had not that particular
stepping-stone been found and shaped and placed in position.
Taken as a whole our stepping-stones lead us up and up towards
the alluring heights of an acropolis of knowledge on which
stands the Temple of Modern Science. The story of the building of
this wonderful structure is in itself fascinating and beautiful.
I. PREHISTORIC SCIENCE
To speak of a prehistoric science may seem like a contradiction
of terms. The word prehistoric seems to imply barbarism while
science clearly enough seems the outgrowth of civilization; but
rightly considered there is no contradiction. For on the one
hand man had ceased to be a barbarian long before the beginning
of what we call the historical period; and on the other hand
science of a kind is no less a precursor and a cause of
civilization than it is a consequent. To get this clearly in
mind we must ask ourselves: What then is science? The word
runs glibly enough upon the tongue of our every-day speech but
it is not often perhaps that they who use it habitually ask
themselves just what it means. Yet the answer is not difficult. A
little attention will show that science as the word is commonly
used implies these things: first the gathering of knowledge
through observation; second the classification of such
knowledge and through this classification the elaboration of
general ideas or principles. In the familiar definition of
Herbert Spencer science is organized knowledge.
Now it is patent enough at first glance that the veriest savage
must have been an observer of the phenomena of nature. But it may
not be so obvious that he must also have been a classifier of his
observations--an organizer of knowledge. Yet the more we consider
the case the more clear it will become that the two methods are
too closely linked together to be dissevered. To observe outside
phenomena is not more inherent in the nature of the mind than to
draw inferences from these phenomena. A deer passing through the
forest scents the ground and detects a certain odor. A sequence
of ideas is generated in the mind of the deer. Nothing in the
deer's experience can produce that odor but a wolf; therefore the
scientific inference is drawn that wolves have passed that way.
But it is a part of the deer's scientific knowledge based on
previous experience individual and racial; that wolves are
dangerous beasts and so combining direct observation in the
present with the application of a general principle based on past
experience the deer reaches the very logical conclusion that it
may wisely turn about and run in another direction. All this
implies essentially a comprehension and use of scientific
principles; and strange as it seems to speak of a deer as
possessing scientific knowledge yet there is really no absurdity
in the statement. The deer does possess scientific knowledge;
knowledge differing in degree only not in kind from the
knowledge of a Newton. Nor is the animal within the range of its
intelligence less logical less scientific in the application of
that knowledge than is the man. The animal that could not make
accurate scientific observations of its surroundings and deduce
accurate scientific conclusions from them would soon pay the
penalty of its lack of logic.
What is true of man's precursors in the animal scale is of
course true in a wider and fuller sense of man himself at the
very lowest stage of his development. Ages before the time which
the limitations of our knowledge force us to speak of as the dawn
of history man had reached a high stage of development. As a
social being he had developed all the elements of a primitive
civilization. If for convenience of classification we speak of
his state as savage or barbaric we use terms which after all
are relative and which do not shut off our primitive ancestors
from a tolerably close association with our own ideals. We know
that even in the Stone Age man had learned how to domesticate
animals and make them useful to him and that he had also learned
to cultivate the soil. Later on doubtless by slow and painful
stages he attained those wonderful elements of knowledge that
enabled him to smelt metals and to produce implements of bronze
and then of iron. Even in the Stone Age he was a mechanic of
marvellous skill as any one of to-day may satisfy himself by
attempting to duplicate such an implement as a chipped
arrow-head. And a barbarian who could fashion an axe or a knife
of bronze had certainly gone far in his knowledge of scientific
principles and their practical application. The practical
application was doubtless the only thought that our primitive
ancestor had in mind; quite probably the question as to
principles that might be involved troubled him not at all. Yet
in spite of himself he knew certain rudimentary principles of
science even though he did not formulate them.
Let us inquire what some of these principles are. Such an inquiry
will as it were clear the ground for our structure of science.
It will show the plane of knowledge on which historical
investigation begins. Incidentally perhaps it will reveal to us
unsuspected affinities between ourselves and our remote ancestor.
Without attempting anything like a full analysis we may note in
passing not merely what primitive man knew but what he did not
know; that at least a vague notion may be gained of the field for
scientific research that lay open for historic man to cultivate.
It must be understood that the knowledge of primitive man as we
are about to outline it is inferential. We cannot trace the
development of these principles much less can we say who
discovered them. Some of them as already suggested are man's
heritage from non-human ancestors. Others can only have been
grasped by him after he had reached a relatively high stage of
human development. But all the principles here listed must surely
have been parts of our primitive ancestor's knowledge before
those earliest days of Egyptian and Babylonian civilization the
records of which constitute our first introduction to the
so-called historical period. Taken somewhat in the order of their
probable discovery the scientific ideas of primitive man may be
roughly listed as follows:
1. Primitive man must have conceived that the earth is flat and
of limitless extent. By this it is not meant to imply that he had
a distinct conception of infinity but for that matter it
cannot be said that any one to-day has a conception of infinity
that could be called definite. But reasoning from experience and
the reports of travellers there was nothing to suggest to early
man the limit of the earth. He did indeed find in his
wanderings that changed climatic conditions barred him from
farther progress; but beyond the farthest reaches of his
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