A History of Science — Volume 1

Produced by Charles Keller





A HISTORY OF SCIENCE

BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, M.D., LL.D.

ASSISTED BY EDWARD H. WILLIAMS, M.D.

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.