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The Evolution of the Scientific Investigator 
 
 
 OPENING ADDRESS 
 
 AT THE 
 
 International Congress of Arts and Science 
 
 AT THE 
 
 Universal Exposition, St. Louis 
 September 1 9, 1 904 
 
 By 
 SIMON NEWCOMB 
 
 UNIVERSAL EXPOSITION, ST. LOUIS, 
 1904 
 
The Evolution of the Scientific Investigator 
 
 OPENING ADDRESS 
 
 AT THE 
 
 International Congress of Arts and Science 
 
 AT THE 
 
 Universal Exposition, St. Louis 
 September 19, 1904 
 
 By 
 SIMON NEWCOMB 
 
 UNIVERSAL EXPOSITION, ST. LOUIS, 
 1904 
 
\ 
 
 l.*':-..' ':;... /*. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC 
 INVESTIGATOR. 
 
 As we look at the assemblage gathered in this 
 hall, comprising so many names of widest renown 
 in every branch of learning we might almost say 
 in every field of human endeavor the first inquiry 
 suggested must be after the object of our meeting. 
 The answer is that our purpose corresponds to the 
 eminence of the assemblage. We aim at nothing 
 less than a survey of the realm of knowledge, as 
 comprehensive as is permitted by the limitations of 
 time and space. The organizers of our congress 
 have honored me with the charge of presenting such 
 preliminary view of its field as may make clear the 
 spirit of our undertaking. 
 
 Certain tendencies characteristic of the science 
 of our day clearly suggest the direction of our thoughts 
 most appropriate to the occasion. Among the 
 strongest of these is one toward laying greater stress 
 on questions of the beginning of things, and regarding 
 a knowledge of the laws of development of any object of 
 study as necessary to the understanding of its present 
 form. It may be conceded that the principle here 
 involved is as applicable in the broad field before us 
 as in a special research into the properties of the 
 minutest organism. It therefore seems meet that 
 we should begin b}^ inquiring what agency has 
 brought about the remarkable development of science 
 
 44203 
 
to which the world of today bears witness. This 
 view is recognized in the plan of our proceed- 
 ings by providing for each great department of 
 knowledge a review of its progress during the 
 century that has elapsed since the great event com- 
 memorated by the scenes outside this hall. But such 
 reviews do not make up that general survey of science 
 at large which is necessary to the development of our 
 theme, and which must include the action of causes that 
 had their origin long before our time. The movement 
 which culminated in making the nineteenth century 
 ever memorable in history is the outcome of a long 
 series of causes, acting through many centuries, which 
 are worthy of especial attention on such an occasion as 
 this. In setting them forth we should avoid laying 
 stress on those visible manifestations which, striking 
 the eye of every beholder, are in no danger of being 
 overlooked, and search rather for those agencies whose 
 activities underlie the whole visible scene, but which 
 are liable to be blotted out of sight by the very brilliancy 
 of the results to which they have given rise. It is easy 
 to draw attention to the wonderful qualities of the oak ; 
 but, from that very fact, it may be needful to point out 
 that the real wonder lies concealed in the acorn from 
 which it grew. 
 
 Our inquiry into the logical order of the causes 
 which have made our civilization what it is today will 
 be facilitated by bringing' to mind certain elementary 
 considerations ideas so familiar that setting them forth 
 may seem like citing a body of truisms and yet so 
 frequently overlooked, not only individually, but in 
 their relation to each other, that the conclusion to 
 
 4 
 
which they lead may be lost to sight. One of these 
 propositions is that psychical rather than material 
 causes are those which we should regard as funda- 
 mental in directing the development of the social 
 organism. The human intellect is the really active 
 agent in every branch of endeavor the primum mobile 
 of civilization and all those material manifestations to 
 which our attention is so often directed are to be 
 regarded as secondary to this first agency. If it be 
 true that ' ' in the world is nothing great but man ; in 
 man is nothing great but mind," then should the key- 
 note of our discourse be the recognition of this first and 
 greatest of powers. 
 
 Another well-known fact is that those applications 
 of the forces of nature to the promotion of human wel- 
 fare which have made our age what it is are of such 
 comparatively recent origin that we need go back only 
 a single century to antedate their most important feat- 
 ures, and scarcely more than four centuries to find 
 their beginning. It follows that the subject of our 
 inquiry should be the commencement, not many cen- 
 turies ago, of a certain new form of intellectual 
 activity. 
 
 Having gained this point of view, our next inquiry 
 will be into the nature of that activity and its relation 
 to the stages of progress which preceded and followed 
 its beginning. The superficial observer, who sees the 
 oak but forgets the acorn, might tell us that the special 
 qualities which have brought out such great results are 
 expert scientific knowledge and rare ingenuity, directed 
 to the. application of the powers of steam and elec- 
 tricity. From this point of view the great inventors 
 
 5 
 
and the great captains of industry were the first agents 
 in bringing about the modern era. But the more care- 
 ful inquirer will see that the work of these men was 
 possible only through a knowledge of the laws of 
 nature, which had been gained by men whose work 
 took precedence of theirs in logical order, and that 
 success in invention has been measured by complete- 
 ness in such knowledge. While giving all due honor 
 to the great inventors, let us remember that the first 
 place is that of the great investigators, whose forceful 
 intellects opened the way to secrets previously hidden 
 from men. Let it be an honor and not a reproach to 
 these men that they were not actuated by the love of 
 gain, and did not keep utilitarian ends in view in the 
 pursuit of their researches. If it seems that in 
 neglecting such ends they were leaving undone the 
 most important part of their work, let us remember 
 that nature turns a forbidding face to those who pay 
 her court with the hope of gain, and is responsive only 
 to those suitors whose love for her is pure and unde- 
 filed. Not only is the special genius required in the 
 investigator not that generally best adapted to applying 
 the discoveries which he makes, but the result of his 
 having sordid ends in view would be to narrow the 
 field of his efforts, and exercise a depressing effect 
 upon his activities. The true man of science has no 
 such expression in his vocabulary as ' * useful knowl- 
 edge." His domain is as wide as nature itself, and he 
 best fulfills his mission when he leaves to others the task 
 of applying the knowledge he gives to the world. 
 
 We have here the explanation of the well-known 
 fact that the functions of the investigator of the laws of 
 
 6 
 
nature, and of the inventor who applies these laws to 
 utilitarian purposes, are rarely united in the same per- 
 son. If the one conspicuous exception which the past 
 century presents to this rule is not unique, we should 
 probably have to go back to Watt to find another. 
 
 From this viewpoint it is clear that the primary 
 agent in the movement which has elevated man to the 
 masterful position he now occupies is the scientific 
 investigator. He it is whose work has deprived plague 
 and pestilence of their terrors, alleviated human suffer- 
 ing, girdled the earth with the electric wire, bound the 
 continent with the iron way, and made neighbors of the 
 most distant nations. As the first agent which has 
 made possible this meeting of his representatives, let his 
 evolution be this day our worthy theme. As we follow 
 the evolution of an organism by studying the stages of 
 its growth, so we have to show how the work of the 
 scientific investigator is related to the ineffectual efforts 
 of his predecessors. 
 
 In our time we think of the process of development 
 in nature as one going continuously forward through 
 the combination of the opposite processes of evolution 
 and dissolution. The tendency of our thought has 
 been in the direction of banishing cataclysms to the 
 theological limbo, and viewing nature as a sleepless 
 plodder, endowed with infinite patience, waiting through 
 long ages for results. I do not contest the truth of 
 the principle of continuity on which this view is based. 
 But it fails to make known to us the whole truth. The 
 building of a ship from the time that her keel is laid 
 until she is making her way across the ocean is a slow 
 and gradual process ; yet there is a cataclysmic epoch 
 
 7 
 
opening up a new era in her history. It is tke moment 
 when, after lying for months or years a dead, inert, 
 immovable mass, she is suddenly endowed with the 
 power of motion, and, as if imbued with life, glides into 
 the stream, eager to begin the career for which she was 
 designed. 
 
 I think it is thus in the development of humanity. 
 Long ages may pass during which a race, to all external 
 observation, appears to be making no real progress. 
 Additions may be made to learning, and the records of 
 history may constantly grow, but there is nothing in 
 its sphere of thought, or in the features of its life, that 
 can be called essentially new. Yet, nature may have 
 been all along slowly working in a way which evades 
 our scrutiny until the result of her operations suddenly 
 appears in a new and revolutionary movement, carrying 
 the race to a higher plane of civilization. 
 
 It is not difficult to point out such epochs in human 
 progress. The greatest of all, because it was the first, 
 is one of which we find no record either in written or 
 geological history. It was the epoch when our pro- 
 genitors first took conscious thought of the morrow, 
 first used the crude weapons which nature had placed 
 within their reach to kill their prey, first built a fire 
 to warm their bodies and cook their food. I love to 
 fancy that there was some one first man, the Adam of 
 evolution, who did all this, and who used the power 
 thus acquired to show his fellows how they might 
 profit by his example. When the members of the tribe 
 or community which he gathered around him began 
 to conceive of life as a whole to include yesterda}', 
 to-day and to-morrow in the same mental grasp to 
 
think how they might apply the gifts of nature to 
 their own uses a movement was begun which should 
 ultimately lead to civilization. 
 
 Long indeed must have been the ages required 
 for the development of this rudest primitive commun- 
 ity into the civilization revealed to us by the most 
 ancient tablets of Egypt and Assyria. After spoken 
 language was developed, and after the rude represen- 
 tation of ideas by visible marks drawn to resemble them 
 had long been practiced, some Cadmus must have 
 invented an alphabet. When the use of written lan- 
 guage was thus introduced, the word of command ceased 
 to be confined to the range of the human voice, and it 
 became possible for master minds to extend their influ- 
 ence as far as a written message could be carried. 
 Then were communities gathered into provinces ; prov- 
 inces into kingdoms ; kingdoms into the great empires 
 of antiquity. Then arose a stage of civilization which 
 we find pictured in the most ancient records a stage 
 in which men were governed by laws that were per- 
 haps as wisely adapted to their conditions as our laws 
 are to ours in which the phenomena of nature were 
 rudely observed, and striking occurrences in the earth 
 or in the heavens recorded in the annals of the nation. 
 
 Vast was the progress of knowledge during the 
 interval between these empires and the century in 
 which modern science began. Yet, if I am right in 
 making a distinction between the slow and regular 
 steps of progress, each growing naturally out of that 
 which preceded it, and the entrance of the mind at 
 some fairly definite epoch into an entirely new sphere 
 of activity, it would appear that there was only one 
 
 "9 
 
such epoch during the entire interval. This was when 
 abstract geometrical reasoning commenced, and astro- 
 nomical observations aiming at precision were recorded, 
 compared and discussed. Closely associated with it 
 must have been the construction of the forms of logic. 
 The radical difference between the demonstration of a 
 theorem of geometry and the reasoning of everyday 
 life which the masses of men must have practiced from 
 the beginning, and which few even today ever get 
 beyond, is so evident at a glance that I need not dwell 
 upon it. The principal feature of this advance is that, 
 by one of those antinomies of the human intellect of 
 which examples are not wanting even in our own time, 
 the development of abstract ideas preceded the concrete 
 knowledge of natural phenomena. When we reflect 
 that in the geometry of Euclid the science of space was 
 brought to such logical perfection that even today its 
 teachers are not agreed as to the practicability of any 
 great improvement upon it, we cannot avoid the feeling 
 that a very slight change in the direction of the intel- 
 lectual activity of the Greeks would have led to the 
 beginning of natural science. But it would seem that 
 the very purity and perfection which was aimed at in 
 their system of geometry stood in the way of any 
 extension or application of its methods and spirit to 
 the field of nature. One example of this is worthy of 
 attention. In modern teaching the idea of magnitude 
 as generated by motion is freely introduced. A line is 
 described by a moving point ; a plane by a moving 
 line ; a solid by a moving plane. It may, at first sight, 
 seem singular that this conception finds no place in the 
 Euclidian system. But we may regard the omission 
 
 10 
 
as a mark of logical purity and rigor. Had the real or 
 supposed advantages of introducing motion into geo- 
 metrical conceptions been suggested to Euclid, we may 
 suppose him to have replied that the theorems of space 
 are independent of time ; that the idea of motion neces- 
 sarily implies time, and that, in consequence, to avail 
 ourselves of it would be to introduce an extraneous 
 element into geometry. 
 
 It is quite possible that the contempt of the ancient 
 philosophers for the practical application of their science, 
 which has continued in some form to our own time, 
 and which is not altogether unwholesome, was a pow- 
 erful factor in the same direction. The result was that, 
 in keeping geometry pure from ideas which did not 
 belong to it, it failed to form what might otherwise have 
 been the basis of physical science. Its founders missed 
 the discovery that methods similar to those of geometric 
 demonstration could be extended into other and wider 
 fields than that of space. Thus not only the develop- 
 ment of applied geometry but the reduction of other 
 conceptions to a rigorous mathematical form was indefi- 
 nitely postponed. 
 
 Astronomy is necessarily a science of observation 
 pure and simple, in which experiment can have no place 
 except as an auxiliary. The vague accounts of striking 
 celestial phenomena handed down by the priests and 
 astrologers of antiquity were followed in the time of the 
 Greeks by observations having, in form at least, a rude 
 approach to precision, though nothing like the degree of 
 precision that the astronomer of today would reach with 
 the naked eye, aided by such instruments as he could 
 fashion from the tools at the command of the ancients. 
 
 IT 
 
The rude observations commenced by the Baby- 
 lonians were continued with gradually improving 
 instruments first by the Greeks and afterward by 
 the Arabs but the results failed to afford any insight 
 into the true relation of the earth to the heavens. 
 What was most remarkable in this failure is that, to 
 take a first step forward which would have led on to 
 success, no more was necessary than a course of abstract 
 thinking vastly easier than that required for working 
 out the problems of geometry. That space is infinite 
 is an unexpressed axiom, tacitly assumed by Euclid 
 and his successors. Combining this with the most 
 elementary consideration of the properties of the tri- 
 angle, it would be seen that a body of any given size 
 could be placed at such a distance in space as to appear 
 to us like a point. Hence a body as large as our 
 earth, which was known to be a globe from the time 
 that the ancient Phoenicians navigated the Mediter- 
 ranean, if placed in the heavens at a sufficient distance, 
 would look like a star. The obvious conclusion that 
 the stars might be bodies like our globe, shining either 
 by their own light or by that of the sun, would have 
 been a first step to the understanding of the true 
 system of the world. 
 
 There is historic evidence that this deduction did 
 not wholly escape the Greek thinkers. It is true that 
 the critical student will assign little weight to the cur- 
 rent belief that the vague theory of Pythagoras that 
 fire was at the centre of all things implies a concep- 
 tion of the heliocentric theory of the solar system. But 
 the testimony of Archimedes, confused though it is in 
 form, leaves no serious doubt that Aristarchus of Samos 
 
not only propounded the view that the earth revolves 
 both on its own axis and around the sun, but that ,he 
 correctly removed the great stumbling-block in the way 
 of this theory by adding that the distance of the fixed 
 stars was infinitely greater than the dimensions of the 
 earth's orbit. Even the world of philosophy was not 
 yet ready for this conception, and, so far from seeing 
 the reasonableness of the explanation, we find Ptolemy 
 arguing against the rotation of the earth on grounds 
 which careful observations of the phenomena around 
 him would have shown to be ill-founded. 
 
 Physical science, if we can apply that term to an 
 unco-ordinated body of facts, was successfully culti- 
 vated from the earliest times. Something must have 
 been known of the properties of metals, and the art 
 of extracting them from their ores must have been 
 practiced, from the time that coins and medals were first 
 stamped. The properties of the most common com- 
 pounds were discovered by alchemists in their vain 
 search for the philosopher's stone, but no actual progress 
 worthy of the name rewarded the practitioners of the 
 black art. 
 
 Perhaps the first approach to a correct method was 
 that of * Archimedes, who by much thinking worked 
 out the law of the lever, reached the conception of the 
 centre of gravity, and demonstrated the first principles 
 of hydrostatics. It is remarkable that he did . not 
 extend his researches into the phenomena of motion, 
 whether spontaneous or produced by force. The sta- 
 tionary condition of the human intellect is most strik- 
 ingly illustrated by the fact that not until the time of 
 Leonardo was any substantial advance made on his 
 
 13 
 
discovery. To sum up in one sentence the most char- 
 acteristic feature of ancient and medieval science, we 
 see a notable contrast between the precision of thought 
 implied in the construction and demonstration of geo- 
 metrical theorems and the vague indefinite character 
 of the ideas of natural phenomena generally, a contrast 
 which did not disappear until the foundations of modern 
 science began to be laid. 
 
 We should miss the most essential point of the 
 difference between medieval and modern learning if we 
 looked upon it as mainly a difference either in the pre- 
 cision or the amount of knowledge. The development 
 of both of these qualities would, under any circum- 
 stances, have been slow and gradual, but sure. We 
 can hardly suppose that any one generation, or even 
 any one century, would have seen the complete substitu- 
 tion of exact for inexact ideas. Slowness of growth is 
 as inevitable in the case of knowledge as in that of a 
 growing organism. The most essential point of differ- 
 ence is one of those seemingly slight ones, the impor- 
 tance of which we are too apt to overlook. It was like 
 the drop of blood in the wrong place, which some one 
 has told us makes all the difference between a philos- 
 opher and a maniac. It was all the difference between 
 a living tree and a dead one, between an inert mass and 
 a growing organism. The transition of knowledge 
 from the dead to the living form must, in any complete 
 review of the subject, be looked upon as the really 
 great event of modern times. Before this event the 
 intellect was bound down by a scholasticism which 
 regarded knowledge as a rounded whole, the parts of 
 which were written in books and carried in the minds 
 
 14 
 
of learned men. The student was taught from the 
 beginning of his work to look upon authority as the 
 foundation of his beliefs. The older the authority the 
 greater the weight it carried. So effective was this 
 teaching that it seems never to have occurred to indi- 
 vidual men that they had all the opportunities ever 
 enjoyed by Aristotle of discovering truth, with the 
 added advantage of all his knowledge to begin with. 
 Advanced as was the development of formal logic, that 
 practical logic was wanting which could see that the 
 last of a series of authorities, every one of which 
 rested on those which preceded il, could never form a 
 surer foundation for any doctrine than that supplied 
 by its original propounder. 
 
 The result of this view of knowledge was that, 
 although during the fifteen centuries following the death 
 of the geometer of Syracuse great universities were 
 founded at which generations of professors expounded 
 all the learning of their time, neither professor nor 
 student ever suspected what latent possibilities of good 
 were concealed in the most familiar operations of nature. 
 Every one felt the wind blow, saw water boil and heard 
 the thunder crash, but never thought of investigating 
 the forces here at play. Up to the middle of the fif- 
 teenth century the most acute observer could scarcely 
 have seen the dawn of a new era. 
 
 In view of this state of things it must be regarded 
 as one of the most remarkable facts in evolutionary 
 history that four or five men, whose mental constitution 
 was either typical of the new order of things or who 
 were powerful agents in bringing it about, were all 
 
 15 
 
born during the fifteenth century, four of them at least 
 at so nearly the same time as to be contemporaries. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, whose artistic genius has 
 charmed succeeeding generations, was also the first 
 practical engineer of his time, and the first man after 
 Archimedes to make a substantial advance in develop- 
 ing the laws of motion. That the world was not pre- 
 pared to make use of his scientific discoveries does not 
 detract from the significance which must attach to the 
 period of his birth. 
 
 Shortly after him was born the great navigator 
 whose bold spirit was to make known a new world, thus 
 giving to commercial enterprise that impetus which 
 was so powerful an agent in bringing about a revolution 
 in the thoughts of men. 
 
 The birth of Columbus was soon followed by 
 that of Copernicus, the first after Aristarchus to dem- 
 onstrate the true system of the world. In him more 
 than in any of his contemporaries do we see the 
 struggle between the old forms of thought and the 
 new. It seems almost pathetic and is certainly most 
 suggestive of the general view of knowledge taken at 
 that time that, instead of claiming credit for bringing 
 to light great truths before unknown, he made a 
 labored attempt to show that, after all, there was noth- 
 ing really new in his system, which he claimed to date 
 from Pythagoras and Philolaus. In this connection it 
 is curious that he makes no mention of Aristarchus, 
 who I think will be regarded by conservative historians 
 as his only demonstrated predecessor. To the hold of 
 the older ideas upon his mind we must attribute the 
 fact that in constructing his system he took great pains 
 
 16 
 
to make as little change as possible in ancient 
 conceptions. 
 
 Luther, the greatest thought-stirrer of them all, 
 practically of the same generation with Copernicns, 
 Leonardo and Colnmbus, does not come in as a scien- 
 tific investigator, bnt as the great loosener of chains 
 which had so fettered the intellect of men that they 
 dared not think otherwise than as the authorities thought. 
 
 Almost coeval with the advent of these intellects 
 was the invention of printing with movable type. 
 Gutenberg was born during the first decade of the 
 century, and his associates and others credited with 
 the invention not many years afterward. If we 
 accept the principle on which I am basing my argu- 
 ment, that we should assign the first place to the birth 
 of those psychic agencies which started men on new 
 lines of thought, then surely was the fifteenth the won- 
 derful century. 
 
 Let us not forget that, in assigning the actors then 
 born to their places, we are not narrating history, but 
 studying a special phase of evolution. It matters not 
 for us that no university invited Leonardo to its halls, 
 and that his science was valued by his contemporaries 
 only as an adjunct to the art of engineering. The 
 great fact still is that he was the first of mankind to 
 propound laws of motion. It is not for anything in 
 Luther's doctrines that he finds a place in our scheme. 
 No matter for us whether they were sound or not. 
 What he did toward the evolution of the scientific 
 investigator was to show by his example that a man 
 might question the best-established and most venerable 
 authority and still live still preserve his intellectual 
 
 17 
 
integrity still command a hearing from nations and 
 their rulers. It matters not for us whether Columbus 
 ever knew that he had discovered a new continent. 
 His work was to teach that neither hydra, chimera 
 nor abyss neither divine injunction nor infernal 
 machination was in the way of men visiting every 
 part of the globe, and that the problem of conquering 
 the world reduced itself to one of sails and rigging, 
 hull and compass. The better part of Copernicus was 
 to direct man to a viewpoint whence he should see that 
 the heavens were of like matter with the earth. All 
 this done, the acorn was planted from which the oak 
 of our civilization should spring. The mad quest for 
 gold which followed the discovery of Columbus, the 
 questionings which absorbed the attention of the 
 learned, the indignation excited by the' seeming 
 vagaries of a Parcelsus, the fear and trembling lest 
 the strange doctrine of Copernicus should undermine 
 the faith of centuries, were all helps to the germina- 
 tion of the seed stimuli to thought which urged it 
 on to explore the new fields opened up to its occupa- 
 tion. This given, all that has since followed came out 
 in regular order of development, and need be here 
 considered only in those phases having a special rela- 
 tion to the purpose of our present meeting. 
 
 So slow was the growth at first that the sixteenth 
 century may scarcely have recognized the inauguration 
 of a new era. Torricelli and Benedetti were of the third 
 generation after Leonardo, and Galileo, the first to make 
 a substantial advance upon his theory, was born more 
 than a century after him. Only two or three men 
 appeared in a generation who, working alone, could 
 
 18 
 
make real progress in discovery, and even these could 
 do little in leavening the minds of their fellowmen with 
 the new ideas. 
 
 Up to the middle of the seventeenth century an 
 agent which all experience since that time shows to be 
 necessary to the most productive intellectual activity 
 was wanting. This was the attraction of like minds, 
 making suggestions to each other, criticising, compar- 
 ing and reasoning. This element was introduced by 
 the organization of the Royal Society of London and 
 the Academy of Sciences of Paris. 
 
 The members of these two bodies seem like ingenious 
 youth suddenly thrown into a new world of interesting 
 objects, the purposes and relations of which they had to 
 discover. The novelty of the situation is strikingly 
 shown in the questions which occupied the minds of 
 the incipient investigators. One natural result of 
 British maritime enterprise was that the aspirations of 
 the Fellows of the Royal Society were not confined to 
 any continent or hemisphere. Inquiries were sent all 
 the way to Batavia to know " whether there be a hill in 
 vSumatra which burneth continually, and a fountain 
 which runneth pure balsam. n The astronomical pre- 
 cision with which it seemed possible that physiological 
 operations might go on was evinced by the inquiry 
 whether the Indians can so prepare that stupefying 
 herb Datura that "they make it lie several days, 
 months, years, according as they will, in a man's body 
 without doing him any harm, and at the end kill him 
 without missing an hour's time." Of this continent 
 one of the inquiries was whether there be a tree in 
 
Mexico that yields water, wine, vinegar, milk, honey, 
 wax, thread and needles. 
 
 Among the problems before the Paris Academy of 
 Sciences those of physiology and biology took a promi- 
 nent place. The distillation of compounds had long 
 been practiced, and the fact that the more spirituous 
 elements of certain substances were thus separated 
 naturally led to the question whether the essential 
 essences of life might not be discoverable in the same 
 way. In order that all might participate in the experi- 
 ments, they were conducted in open session of the 
 Academy, thus guarding against the danger of any one 
 member obtaining for his exclusive personal use a pos- 
 sible elixir of life. A wide range of the animal and 
 vegetable kingdom, including cats, dogs and birds of 
 various species, were thus analyzed. The practice of 
 dissection was introduced on a large scale. That of the 
 cadaver of an elephant occupied several sessions, and 
 was of such interest that the monarch himself was a 
 spectator. 
 
 To the same epoch with the formation and first 
 work of these two bodies belongs the invention of a 
 mathematical method which in its importance to the 
 advance of exact science may be classed with the 
 invention of the alphabet in its relation to the progress 
 of society at large. The use of algebraic symbols to 
 represent quantities had its origin before the commence- 
 ment of the new era, and gradually grew into a highly 
 developed form during the first two centuries of that era. 
 But this method could represent quantities only as fixed. 
 It is true that the elasticity inherent in the use of such 
 symbols permitted of their being applied to any and 
 
 20 
 
every quantity ; yet, in any one application, the quan- 
 tity was considered as fixed and definite. But most of 
 the magnitudes of nature are in a state of continual 
 variation; indeed, since all motion is variation, thf 
 latter is a universal characteristic of all phenomena. 
 No serious advance could be made in the application of 
 algebraic language to the expression of physical phe- 
 nomena until it could be so extended as to express varia- 
 tion in quantities, as well as the quantities themselves. 
 This extension, worked out independently by Newton 
 and Leibnitz, may be classed as the most fruitful of 
 conceptions in exact science. With it the way was 
 opened for the unimpeded and continually accelerated 
 progress of the last two centuries. 
 
 The feature of this period which has the closest 
 relation to the purpose of our coming together is the 
 seemingly unending subdivision of knowledge into 
 specialties, many of which are becoming so minute 
 and so isolated that they seem to have no interest for 
 any but their few pursuers. Happily science itself 
 has afforded a corrective for its own tendency in this 
 direction. The careful thinker will see that in these 
 seemingly diverging branches common elements and 
 common principles are corning more and more to light. 
 There is an increasing recognition of methods of 
 research, and of deduction, which are common to large 
 branches, or to the whole of science. We are more 
 and more recognizing the principle that progress in 
 knowledge implies its reduction to more exact forms, 
 and the expression of its ideas in language more or 
 less mathematical. The problem before the organizers 
 of this Congress was, therefore, to bring the sciences 
 
 21 
 
together, and seek for the unity which we believe 
 underlies their infinite diversity. 
 
 The assembling of such a body as now fills this 
 hall was scarcely possible in any preceding generation, 
 and is made possible now only through the agency of 
 science itself. It differs from all preceding inter- 
 national meetings by the universality of its scope, 
 which aims to include the whole of knowledge. It is 
 also unique in that none but leaders have been sought 
 out as members. It is unique in that so many lands 
 have delegated their choicest intellects to carry on its 
 work. They come from the country to which our 
 republic is indebted for a third of its territory, includ- 
 ing the ground on which we stand ; from the land which 
 has taught us that the most scholarly devotion to the 
 languages and learning of the cloistered past is com- 
 patible with leadership in the practical application of 
 modern science to the arts of life ; from the island whose 
 language and literature have found a new field and a 
 vigorous growth in this region ; from the last seat of the 
 holy Roman Empire; from the country which, remem- 
 bering a monarch who made an astronomical obser- 
 vation at the Greenwich Observatory, has enthroned 
 science in one of the highest places in its government ; 
 from the peninsula so learned that we have invited one 
 of its scholars to come and tell us of our own language ; 
 from the land which gave birth to Leonardo, Galileo, 
 Torricelli, Columbus, Volta what an array of immortal 
 names ! from the little republic of glorious history 
 which, breeding men rugged as its eternal snow-peaks, 
 has yet been the seat of scientific investigation since 
 the day of the Bernoulli s ; from the land whose heroic 
 
 22 
 
dwellers did not Hesitate to use the ocean itself to pro- 
 tect it against invaders, and which now makes us 
 marvel at the amount of erudition compressed within 
 its little area ; from the nation across the Pacific, which, 
 by half a century of unequaled progress in the arts of 
 life, has made an important contribution to evolution- 
 ary science through demonstrating the falsity of the 
 theory that the most ancient races are doomed to be 
 left in the rear of the advancing age in a word, from 
 every great center of intellectual activity on the globe 
 I see before me eminent representatives of that world- 
 advance in knowledge which we have met to celebrate. 
 May we not confidently hope that the discussions of 
 such an assemblage will prove pregnant of a future for 
 science which shall outshine even its brilliant past. 
 
 Gentlemen and scholars all ! You do not visit 
 our shores to find great collections in which centuries 
 of humanity have given expression on canvas and in 
 marble to their hopes, fears and aspirations. Nor do 
 you expect institutions and buildings hoary with age. 
 But as you feel the vigor latent in the fresh air of 
 these expansive prairies, which has collected the 
 products of human genius by which we are here sur- 
 rounded, and, I may add, brought us together; as you 
 study the institutions which we have founded for the 
 benefit, not only of our own people, but of humanity at 
 large; as you meet the men who, in the short space of 
 one century, have transformed this valley from a 
 savage wilderness into what it is today then may you 
 find compensation for the want of a past like yours by 
 seeing with prophetic eye a future world-power of which 
 this region shall be the seat. If such is to be the 
 
 23 
 
outcome of the institutions which we are now building 
 up, then may your present visit be a blessing both to 
 your posterity and ours by making that power one for 
 good to all mankind. Your deliberations will help to 
 demonstrate to us and to the world at large that the 
 reign of law must supplant that of brute force in the 
 relations of the nations, just as it has supplanted it in 
 the relations of individuals. You will help to show 
 that the war which science is now waging against the 
 sources of diseases, pain and misery offers an even 
 nobler field for the exercise of heroic qualities than can 
 that of battle. We hope that when, after your all too- 
 fleeting sojourn in our midst, you return to your own 
 shores, you will long feel the influence of the new air 
 you have breathed in an infusion of increased vigor in 
 pursuing your varied labors. And if a new impetus 
 is thus given to the great intellectual movement of the 
 past century, resulting not only in promoting the uni- 
 fication of knowledge, but in widening its field through 
 new combinations of effort on the part of its votaries, 
 the projectors, organizers and supporters of this Con- 
 gress of Arts and Science will be justified of their 
 labors. 
 
 24 
 
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