On the Philosophy of Discovery, Chapters Historical and Critical

The writings of Descartes have been most admired, and his method most commended, by those authors who have employed themselves upon metaphysical rather than physical subjects of inquiry. Perhaps we might say that, in reference to such subjects, this method is not so vicious as at first, when contrasted with the Baconian induction, it seems to be: for it might be urged that the thoughts from which Descartes begins his reasonings are, in reality, experiments of the kind which the subject requires us to consider: each such thought is a fact in the intellectual world; and of such facts, the metaphysician seeks to discover the laws. I shall not here examine the validity of this plea; but shall turn to the consideration of the actual progress of physical science, and its effect on men's minds.

4. Actual progress in Science.—The practical discoverers were indeed very active and very successful during the seventeenth century, which opened with Bacon's survey and exhortations. The laws of nature, of which men had begun to obtain a glimpse in the preceding century, were investigated with zeal and sagacity, and the consequence was that the foundations of most of the modern physical sciences were laid. That mode of research by experiment and observation, which had, a little time ago, been a strange, and to many, an unwelcome innovation, was now become the habitual course of philosophers. The revolution from the philosophy of tradition to the philosophy of experience was completed. The great discoveries of Kepler belonged to the preceding century. They are not, I believe, noticed, either by Bacon or by Descartes; but they gave a strong impulse to astronomical and mechanical speculators, by showing the necessity of a sound science of motion. Such a science Galileo had already begun to construct. At the time of which I speak, his disciples211 were still labouring at this task, and at other problems which rapidly suggested themselves. They had already convinced themselves that air had weight; in 1643 Torricelli proved this practically by the invention of the Barometer; in 1647 Pascal proved it still further by sending the Barometer to the top of a mountain. Pascal and Boyle brought into clear view the fundamental laws of fluid equilibrium; Boyle and Mariotte determined the law of the compression of air as regulated by its elasticity. Otto Guericke invented the air-pump, and by his "Madgeburg Experiments" on a vacuum, illustrated still further the effects of the air. Guericke pursued what Gilbert had begun, the observation of electrical phenomena; and these two physicists made an important step, by detecting repulsion as well as attraction in these phenomena. Gilbert had already laid the foundations of the science of Magnetism. The law of refraction, at which Kepler had laboured in vain, was, as we have seen, discovered by Snell (about 1621), and published by Descartes. Mersenne had discovered some of the more important parts of the theory of Harmonics. In sciences of a different kind, the same movement was visible. Chemical doctrines tended to assume a proper degree of generality, when Sylvius in 1679 taught the opposition of acid and alkali, and Stahl, soon after, the phlogistic theory of combustion. Steno had remarked the most important law of crystallography in 1669, that the angles of the same kind of crystals are always equal. In the sciences of classification, about 1680, Ray and Morison in England resumed the attempt to form a systematic botany, which had been interrupted for a hundred years, from the time of the memorable essay of Cæsalpinus. The grand discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey about 1619, was followed in 1651 by Pecquet's discovery of the course of the chyle. There could now no longer be any question whether science was progressive, or whether observation could lead to new truths.

Among these cultivators of science, such sentiments as have been already quoted became very familiar;—that knowledge is to be sought from nature herself by observation and experiment;—that in such matters tradition is of no force when opposed to experience, and that mere reasonings without facts cannot lead to solid knowledge. But I do not know that we find in these writers any more special rules of induction and scientific research which have since been confirmed and universally adopted. Perhaps too, as was natural in so great a revolution, the writers of this time, especially the second-rate ones, were somewhat too prone to disparage the labours and talents of Aristotle and the ancients in general, and to overlook the ideal element of our knowledge, in their zealous study of phenomena. They urged, sometimes in an exaggerated manner, the superiority of modern times in all that regards science, and the supreme and sole importance of facts in scientific investigations. There prevailed among them also a lofty and dignified tone of speaking of the condition and prospects of science, such as we are accustomed to admire in the Verulamian writings; for this, in a less degree, is epidemic among those who a little after his time speak of the new philosophy.

5. Otto Guericke, &c.—I need not illustrate these characteristics at any great length. I may as an example notice Otto Guericke's Preface to his Experimenta Magdeburgica (1670). He quotes a passage from Kircher's Treatise on the Magnetic Art, in which the author says, "Hence it appears how all philosophy, except it be supported by experiments, is empty, fallacious, and useless; what monstrosities philosophers, in other respects of the highest and subtlest genius, may produce in philosophy by neglecting experiment. Thus Experience alone is the Dissolver of Doubts, the Reconciler of Difficulties, the sole Mistress of Truth, who holds a torch before us in obscurity, unties our knots, teaches us the true causes of things." Guericke himself reiterates the same remark, adding that "philosophers, insisting upon their own thoughts and arguments merely, cannot come to any sound conclusion respecting the natural constitution of the world." Nor were the Cartesians slow in taking up the same train of reflection. Thus Gilbert Clark who, in 1660, published212 a defence of Descartes' doctrine of a plenum in the universe, speaks in a tone which reminds us of Bacon, and indeed was very probably caught from him: "Natural philosophy formerly consisted entirely of loose and most doubtful controversies, carried on in high-sounding words, fit rather to delude than to instruct men. But at last (by the favour of the Deity) there shone forth some more divine intellects, who taking as their counsellors reason and experience together, exhibited a new method of philosophizing. Hence has been conceived a strong hope that philosophers may embrace, not a shadow or empty image of Truth, but Truth herself: and that Physiology (Physics) scattering these controversies to the winds, will contract an alliance with Mathematics. Yet this is hardly the work of one age; still less of one man. Yet let not the mind despond, or doubt not that, one party of investigators after another following the same method of philosophizing, at last, under good auguries, the mysteries of nature being daily unlocked as far as human feebleness will allow, Truth may at last appear in full, and these nuptial torches may be lighted."

As another instance of the same kind, I may quote the preface to the First volume of the Transactions of the Academy of Sciences at Paris: "It is only since the present century," says the writer, "that we can reckon the revival of Mathematics and Physics. M. Descartes and other great men have laboured at this work with so much success, that in this department of literature, the whole face of things has been changed. Men have quitted a sterile system of physics, which for several generations had been always at the same point; the reign of words and terms is passed; men will have things; they establish principles which they understand, they follow those principles; and thus they make progress. Authority has ceased to have more weight than Reason: that which was received without contradiction because it had been long received, is now examined, and often rejected: and philosophers have made it their business to consult, respecting natural things, Nature herself rather than the Ancients." These had now become the commonplaces of those who spoke concerning the course and method of the Sciences.

6. Hooke.—In England, as might be expected, the influence of Francis Bacon was more directly visible. We find many writers, about this time, repeating the truths which Bacon had proclaimed, and in almost every case showing the same imperfections in their views which we have noticed in him. We may take as an example of this Hooke's Essay, entitled "A General Scheme or Idea of the present state of Natural Philosophy, and how its defects may be remedied by a Methodical proceeding in the making Experiments and collecting Observations; whereby to compile a Natural History as a solid basis for the superstructure of true Philosophy." This Essay may be looked upon as an attempt to adapt the Novum Organon to the age which succeeded its publication. We have in this imitation, as in the original, an enumeration of various mistakes and impediments which had in preceding times prevented the progress of knowledge; exhortations to experiment and observation as the only solid basis of Science; very ingenious suggestions of trains of inquiry, and modes of pursuing them; and a promise of obtaining scientific truths when facts have been duly accumulated. This last part of his scheme the author calls a Philosophical Algebra; and he appears to have imagined that it might answer the purpose of finding unknown causes from known facts, by means of certain regular processes, in the same manner as Common Algebra finds unknown from known quantities. But this part of the plan appears to have remained unexecuted. The suggestion of such a method was a result of the Baconian notion that invention in a discoverer might be dispensed with. We find Hooke adopting the phrases in which this notion is implied: thus he speaks of the understanding as "being very prone to run into the affirmative way of judging, and wanting patience to follow and prosecute the negative way of inquiry, by rejection of disagreeing natures." And he follows Bacon also in the error of attempting at once to obtain from the facts the discovery of a "nature," instead of investigating first the measures and the laws of phenomena. I return to more general notices of the course of men's thoughts on this subject.

7. Royal Society.—Those who associated themselves together for the prosecution of science quoted Bacon as their leader, and exulted in the progress made by the philosophy which proceeded upon his principles. Thus in Oldenburg's Dedication of the Transactions of the Royal Society of London for 1670, to Robert Boyle, he says; "I am informed by such as well remember the best and worst days of the famous Lord Bacon, that though he wrote his Advancement of Learning and his Instauratio Magna in the time of his greatest power, yet his greatest reputation rebounded first from the most intelligent foreigners in many parts of Christendom:" and after speaking of his practical talents and his public employments, he adds, "much more justly still may we wonder how, without any great skill in Chemistry, without much pretence to the Mathematics or Mechanics, without optic aids or other engines of late invention, he should so much transcend the philosophers then living, in judicious and clear instructions, in so many useful observations and discoveries, I think I may say beyond the records of many ages." And in the end of the Preface to the same volume, he speaks with great exultation of the advance of science all over Europe, referring undoubtedly to facts then familiar. "And now let envy snarl, it cannot stop the wheels of active philosophy, in no part of the known world;—not in France, either in Paris or in Caen;—not in Italy, either in Rome, Naples, Milan, Florence, Venice, Bononia or Padua;—in none of the Universities either on this or on that side of the seas, Madrid and Lisbon, all the best spirits in Spain and Portugal, and the spacious and remote dominions to them belonging;—the Imperial Court and the Princes of Germany; the Northern Kings and their best luminaries; and even the frozen Muscovite and Russian have all taken the operative ferment: and it works high and prevails every way, to the encouragement of all sincere lovers of knowledge and virtue."

Again, in the Preface for 1672, he pursues the same thought into detail: "We must grant that in the last age, when operative philosophy began to recover ground, and to tread on the heels of triumphant Philology; emergent adventures and great successes were encountered by dangerous oppositions and strong obstructions. Galilæus and others in Italy suffered extremities for their celestial discoveries; and here in England Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was in his greatest lustrous, was notoriously slandered to have erected a school of atheism, because he gave countenance to chemistry, to practical arts, and to curious mechanical operations, and designed to form the best of them into a college. And Queen Elizabeth's Gilbert was a long time esteemed extravagant for his magnetisms; and Harvey for his diligent researches in pursuance of the circulation of the blood. But when our renowned Lord Bacon had demonstrated the methods for a perfect restoration of all parts of real knowledge; and the generous and philosophical Peireskius had, soon after, agitated in all parts to redeem the most instructive antiquities, and to excite experimental essays and fresh discoveries; the success became on a sudden stupendous; and effective philosophy began to sparkle, and even to flow into beams of shining light all over the world."

The formation of the Royal Society of London and of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, from which proceeded the declamations just quoted, were among many indications, belonging to this period, of the importance which states as well as individuals had by this time begun to attach to the cultivation of science. The English Society was established almost immediately when the restoration of the monarchy appeared to give a promise of tranquillity to the nation (in 1660), and the French Academy very soon afterwards (in 1666). These measures were very soon followed by the establishment of the Observatories of Paris and Greenwich (in 1667 and 1675); which may be considered to be a kind of public recognition of the astronomy of observation, as an object on which it was the advantage and the duty of nations to bestow their wealth.

8. Bacon's New Atalantis.—When philosophers had their attention turned to the boundless prospect of increase to the knowledge and powers and pleasures of man which the cultivation of experimental philosophy seemed to promise, it was natural that they should think of devising institutions and associations by which such benefits might be secured. Bacon had drawn a picture of a society organized with a view to such purpose, in his fiction of the "New Atalantis." The imaginary teacher who explains this institution to the inquiring traveller, describes it by the name of Solomon's House; and says213, "The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things; and the enlarging the bounds of the human empire to effecting of things possible." And, as parts of this House, he describes caves and wells, chambers and towers, baths and gardens, parks and pools, dispensatories and furnaces, and many other contrivances, provided for the purpose of making experiments of many kinds. He describes also the various employments of the Fellows of this College, who take a share in its researches. There are merchants of light, who bring books and inventions from foreign countries; depredators, who gather the experiments which exist in books; mystery-men, who collect the experiments of the mechanical arts; pioneers or miners, who invent new experiments; and compilers, "who draw the experiments of the former into titles and tables, to give the better light for the drawing of observations and axioms out of them." There are also dowry-men or benefactors, that cast about how to draw out of the experiments of their fellows things of use and practice for man's life; lamps, that direct new experiments of a more penetrating light than the former; inoculators, that execute the experiments so directed. Finally, there are the interpreters of nature, that raise the former discoveries by experiments into greater observations (that is, more general truths), axioms and aphorisms. Upon this scheme we may remark, that fictitious as it undisguisedly is, it still serves to exhibit very clearly some of the main features of the author's philosophy:—namely, his steady view of the necessity of ascending from facts to the most general truths by several stages;—an exaggerated opinion of the aid that could be derived in such a task from technical separation of the phenomena and a distribution of them into tables;—a belief, probably incorrect, that the offices of experimenter and interpreter may be entirely separated, and pursued by different persons with a certainty of obtaining success!—and a strong determination to make knowledge constantly subservient to the uses of life.

9. Cowley.—Another project of the same kind, less ambitious but apparently more directed to practice, was published a little later (1657) by another eminent man of letters in this country. I speak of Cowley's "Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy." He suggests that a College should be established at a short distance from London, endowed with a revenue of four thousand pounds, and consisting of twenty professors with other members. The objects of the labours of these professors he describes to be, first, to examine all knowledge of nature delivered to us from former ages and to pronounce it sound or worthless; second, to recover the lost inventions of the ancients; third, to improve all arts that we now have; lastly, to discover others that we yet have not. In this proposal we cannot help marking the visible declension from Bacon's more philosophical view. For we have here only a very vague indication of improving old arts and discovering new, instead of the two clear Verulamian antitheses, Experiments and Axioms deduced from them, on the one hand, and on the other an ascent to general Laws, and a derivation, from these, of Arts for daily use. Moreover the prominent place which Cowley has assigned to the verifying the knowledge of former ages and recovering "the lost inventions and drowned lands of the ancients," implies a disposition to think too highly of traditionary knowledge; a weakness which Bacon's scheme shows him to have fully overcome. And thus it has been up to the present day, that with all Bacon's mistakes, in the philosophy of scientific method few have come up to him, and perhaps none have gone beyond him.

Cowley exerted himself to do justice to the new philosophy in verse as well as prose, and his Poem to the Royal Society expresses in a very noble manner those views of the history and prospects of philosophy which prevailed among the men by whom the Royal Society was founded. The fertility and ingenuity of comparison which characterize Cowley's poetry are well known; and these qualities are in this instance largely employed for the embellishment of his subject. Many of the comparisons which he exhibits are apt and striking. Philosophy is a ward whose estate (human knowledge) is, in his nonage, kept from him by his guardians and tutors; (a case which the ancient rhetoricians were fond of taking as a subject of declamation;) and these wrong-doers retain him in unjust tutelage and constraint for their own purposes; until

Bacon at last, a mighty man, arose,(Whom a wise King, and Nature, choseLord Chancellor of both their laws,)And boldly undertook the injured pupil's cause.

Again, Bacon is one who breaks a scarecrow Priapus which stands in the garden of knowledge. Again, Bacon is one who, instead of a picture of painted grapes, gives us real grapes from which we press "the thirsty soul's refreshing wine." Again, Bacon is like Moses, who led the Hebrews forth from the barren wilderness, and ascended Pisgah;—

Did on the very border standOf the blest promised land,And from the mountain's top of his exalted witSaw it himself and showed us it.

The poet however adds, that Bacon discovered, but did not conquer this new world; and that the men whom he addresses must subdue these regions. These "champions" are then ingeniously compared to Gideon's band:

Their old and empty pitchers first they brake,And with their hands then lifted up the light.

There were still at this time some who sneered at or condemned the new philosophy; but the tide of popular opinion was soon strongly in its favour. I have elsewhere214 noticed a pasquinade of the poet Boileau in 1682, directed against the Aristotelians. At this time, and indeed for long afterwards, the philosophers of France were Cartesians. The English men of science, although partially and for a time they accepted some of Descartes' opinions, for the most part carried on the reform independently, and in pursuance of their own views. And they very soon found a much greater leader than Descartes to place at their head, and to take as their authority, so far as they acknowledged authority, in their speculations. I speak of Newton, whose influence upon the philosophy of science I must now consider.

10. Barrow.—I will, however, first mention one other writer who may, in more than one way, be regarded as the predecessor of Newton. I speak of Isaac Barrow, whom Newton succeeded as Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, and who in his mathematical speculations approached very near to Newton's method of Fluxions. He afterwards (in 1673) became Master of Trinity College, which office he held till his death in 1677. But the passages which I shall quote belong to an earlier period, (when Barrow was about 22 years old,) and may be regarded as expressions of the opinions which were then current among active-minded and studious young men. They manifest a complete familiarity with the writings both of Bacon and of Descartes, and a very just appreciation of both. The discourse of which I speak is an academical exercise delivered in 1652, on the thesis Cartesiana hypothesis haud satisfacit præcipuis naturæ phænomenis. By the "Cartesian hypothesis," he does not mean the hypothesis that the planets are moved by vortices of etherial matter: I believe that this Cartesian tenet never had any disciples in England; it certainly never took any hold of Cambridge. By the Cartesian hypothesis, Barrow means the doctrine that all the phenomena of nature can be accounted for by matter and motion; and allowing that the motions of the planets are to be so accounted for, (which is Newtonian as well as Cartesian doctrine,) he denies that the Cartesian hypothesis accounts for "the generations, properties, and specific operations of animals, plants, minerals, stones, and other natural bodies," in doing which he shows a sound philosophical judgment. But among the parts of this discourse most bearing on our present purpose are those where he mentions Bacon. "Against Cartesius," he says, "I pit the chymists and others, but especially as the foremost champion of this battle, our Verulam, a man of great name and of great judgment, who condemned this philosophy before it was born." "He," adds Barrow, "several times in his Organon, warned men against all hypotheses of this kind, and noticed beforehand that there was not much to be expected from those principles which are brought into being by violent efforts of argumentation from the brains of particular men: for that, as upon the phenomena of the stars, various constructions of the heavens may be devised, so also upon the phenomena of the Universe, still more dogmas may be founded and constructed; and yet all such are mere inventions: and as many philosophies of this kind as are or shall be extant, so many fictitious and theatrical worlds are made." The reference is doubtless to Aphorism LXII. of the First Book of the Novum Organon, in which Bacon is speaking of his "Idols of the Theatre." After making the remark which Barrow has adopted, Bacon adds, "Such theatrical fables have also this in common with those of dramatic poets, that the dramatic story is more regular and elegant than true histories are, and is made so as to be agreeable." Barrow, having this in his mind, goes on to say: "And though Cartesius has dressed up the stage of his theatre more prettily than any other person, and made his drama more like history, still he is not exempt from the like censure." And he then refers to Cartesius's own declaration, that he did not learn his system from things themselves, but tried to impose his own laws upon things; thus inverting the order of true philosophy.