whirlpools. But the mind is capable of acquiring scientific Ideas, which are better fitted to undergo discussion and impulsion. When our speculations are duly fed from the springheads of Observation, and frequently drawn off into the region of Applied Science, we may have a living stream of consistent and progressive knowledge. That science may be both real as to its import, and logical as to its form, the examples of many existing sciences sufficiently prove. School Philosophy.-So long, however, as attempts are made to form sciences, without such a verification and realization of their fundamental ideas, there is, in the natural series of speculation, no self-correcting principle. A philosophy constructed on notions obscure, vague, and unsubstantial, and held in spite of the want of correspondence between its doctrines and the actual train of physical events, may long subsist, and occupy men's minds. Such a philosophy must depend for its permanence upon the pleasure which men feel in tracing the operations of their own and other men's minds, and in reducing them to logical consistency and systematical arrangement. In these cases the main subjects of attention are not external objects, but speculations previously delivered; the object is not to interpret nature, but man's mind. The opinions of the Masters are the facts which the Disciples endeavor to reduce to unity, or to follow into consequences. A series of speculators who pursue such a course, may properly be termed a School, and their philosophy a School Philosophy; whether their agreement in such a mode of seeking knowledge arise from personal communication and tradition, or be merely the result of a community of intellectual character and propensity. The two great periods of School Philosophy (it will be recollected that we are here directing our attention mainly to physical science) were that of the Greeks and that of the Middle Ages;-the period of the first waking of science, and that of its midday slumber. What has been said thus briefly and imperfectly, would require great detail and much explanation, to give it its full significance and authority. But it seemed proper to state so much in this place, in order to render more intelligible and more instructive, at the first aspect, the view of the attempted or effected progress of science. It is, perhaps, a disadvantage inevitably attending an undertaking like the present, that it must set out with statements so abstract; and must present them without their adequate development and proof. Such an Introduction, both in its character and its scale of execution, may be compared to the geographical sketch of a country, with which the historian of its fortunes often begins his narration. So much of Metaphysics is as necessary to us as such a portion of Geography is to the Historian of an Empire; and what has hitherto been said, is intended as a slight outline of the Geography of that Intellectual World, of which we have here to study the History. The name which we have given to this History-A HISTORY OF THE INDUCTIVE SCIENCES-has the fault of seeming to exclude from the rank of Inductive Sciences those which are not included in the History; as Ethnology and Glossology, Political Economy, Psychology. This exclusion I by no means wish to imply; but I could find no other way of compendiously describing my subject, which was intended to comprehend those Sciences in which, by the observation of facts and the use of reason, systems of doctrine have been established which are universally received as truths among thoughtful men; and which may therefore be studied as examples of the manner in which truth is to be discovered. Perhaps a more exact description of the work would have been, A History of the principal Sciences hitherto established by Induction. I may add that I do not include in the phrase "Inductive Sciences," the branches of Pure Mathematics (Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra, and the like), because, as I have elsewhere stated (Phil. Ind. Sc., book ii. c. 1), these are not Inductive but Deductive Sciences. They do not infer true theories from observed facts, and more general from more limited laws: but they trace the conditions of all theory, the properties of space and number; and deduce results from ideas without the aid of experience. The History of these Sciences is briefly given in Chapters 13 and 14 of the Second Book of the Philosophy just referred to. I may further add that the other work to which I refer, the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, is in a great measure historical, no less than the present History. That work contains the history of the Sciences so far as it depends on Ideas; the present work contains the history so far as it depends upon Observation. The two works resulted simultaneously from the same examination of the principal writers on science in all ages, and may serve to supplement each other. Τις γαρ αρχα λέξατο ναυτιλίας ; Tos cheer bhors: Επεὶ δ ̓ ἐμβόλου Κρέμασαν αγκώμας ύπερθεν Χρυσίαν χείρεσσι λαβὼν φιάλαν 4 λίγο κόστοιο μοίραν, PINDAR Pyth. iv. 124, 349. Whence came their voyage? them what peril held With adamantine rivets firmly bound? But soon as on the vessel's bow Then took the Leader on the prow In hands a golden cup, And on great Father Jove did call, And loved return at last. |
