# Popular Science Monthly/Volume 2/November 1872/Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought I

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* AIMS AND INSTRUMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT.
By Professor W. KINGDON CLIFFORD,
OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
I.
IT may have occurred (and very naturally, too, to such as have had the curiosity to read the title of this lecture) that it must necessarily be a very dry and difficult subject; interesting to very few, intelligible to still fewer, and, above all, utterly incapable of adequate treatment within the limits of a discourse like this. It is quite true that a complete setting forth of my subject would require a comprehensive treatise on logic, with incidental discussion of the main questions of metaphysics; that it would deal with ideas demanding close study for their apprehension, and investigations requiring a peculiar taste to relish them. It is not my intention now to present you with such a treatise.
The British Association, like the world in general, contains three classes of persons. In the first place, it contains scientific thinkers; that is to say, persons whose thoughts have very frequently the characters which I shall presently describe. Secondly, it contains persons who are engaged in work upon what are called scientific subjects, but who in general do not, and are not expected to, think about these subjects in a scientific manner. Lastly, it contains persons who suppose that their work and their thoughts are unscientific, but who would like to know something about the business of the other two classes aforesaid. Now, to any one who, belonging to one of these classes, considers either of the other two, it will be apparent that there is a certain gulf between him and them; that he does not quite understand them, nor they him; and that an opportunity for sympathy and ​comradeship is lost through this want of understanding. It is this gulf that I desire to bridge over, to the best of my power. That the scientific thinker may consider his business in relation to the great life of mankind; that the noble army of practical workers may recognize their fellowship with the outer world, and the spirit which must guide both; that this so-called outer world may see in the work of science only the putting in evidence of all that is excellent in its own work; may feel that the kingdom of science is within it: these are the objects of the present discourse. And they compel me to choose such portions of my vast subject as shall be intelligible to all, while they ought at least to command an interest universal, personal, and profound.
In the first place, then, what is meant by scientific thought? You may have heard some of it expressed in the various sections this morning. You have probably also heard expressed in the same places a great deal of unscientific thought; notwithstanding that it was about mechanical esergy, or about hydrocarbons, or about eocene deposits, or about malacopterygii. For scientific thought does not mean thought about scientific subjects with long names. There are no scientific subjects. The subject of science is the human universe; that is to say, every thing that is, or has been, or may be, related to man. Let us, then, taking several topics in succession, endeavor to make out in what cases thought about them is scientific, and in what cases not.
Ancient astronomers observed that the relative motions of the sun and moon recurred all over again in the same order about every nineteen years. They were thus enabled to predict the time at which eclipses would take place. A calculator at one of our observatories can do a great deal more this. Like them, he makes use of past experience to predict the future; but he knows of a great number of other cycles besides that one of the nineteen years, and takes account of all of them; and he can tell about the solar eclipse of six years hence exactly where it will be visible, and how much of the sun's surface will be covered at each place, and, to a second, at what time of day it will begin and finish there. This prediction involves technical skill of the highest order; but it does not involve scientific thought, as any astronomer will tell you.
By such calculations the places of the planet Uranus at different times of the year have been predicted and set down. The predictions were not fulfilled. Then arose Adams, and from these errors in the prediction he calculated the place of an entirely new planet, that had never yet been suspected; and you all know how the new planet was actually found in that place. Now, this prediction does involve scientific thought, as any one who has studied it will tell you.
Here, then, are two cases of thought about the same subject, both predicting events by the application of previous experience, yet we say one is technical and the other scientific.
​Now, let us take an example from the building of bridges and roofs. When an opening is to be spanned over by a material construction, which must bear a certain weight without bending enough to injure itself, there are two forms in which this construction can be made, the arch and the chain. Every part of an arch is compressed or pushed by the other parts; every part of a chain is in a state of tension, or is pulled by the other parts. In many cases these forms are united. A girder consists of two main pieces or booms, of which the upper one acts as an arch and is compressed, while the lower one acts as a chain and is pulled; and this is true even when both the pieces are quite straight. They are enabled to act in this way by being tied together, or braced, as it is called, by cross-pieces, which you must often have seen. Now, suppose that any good, practical engineer makes a bridge or roof upon some approved pattern which has been made before. He designs the size and shape of it to suit the opening which has to be spanned; selects his material according to the locality; assigns the strength which must be given to the several parts of the structure according to the load which it will have to bear. There is a great deal of thought in the making of this design, whose success is predicted by the application of previous experience; it requires technical skill of a very high order; but it is not scientific thought. On the other hand, Mr. Fleeming Jenkin designs a roof consisting of two arches braced together, instead of an arch and a chain braced together; and, although this form is quite different from any known structure, yet before it is built he assigns with accuracy the amount of material that must be put into every part of the structure in order to make it bear the required load, and this prediction may be trusted with perfect security. What is the natural comment on this? Why, that Mr. Fleeming Jenkin is a scientific engineer.
Now, it seems to me that the difference between scientific and merely technical thought, not only in these, but in all other instances which I have considered, is just this: Both of them make use of experience to direct human action; but while technical thought or skill enables a man to deal with the same circumstances that he has met with before, scientific thought enables him to deal with different circumstances that he has never met with before. But how can experience of one thing enable us to deal with another quite different thing? To answer this question we shall have to consider more closely the nature of scientific thought.
Let us take another example. You know that if you make a dot on a piece of paper, and then hold a piece of Iceland spar over it, you will see not one dot but two. A mineralogist, by measuring the angles of a crystal, can tell you whether or no it possesses this property without looking through it. He requires no scientific thought to do that. But Sir William Rowan Hamilton, the late Astronomer-Royal ​of Ireland, knowing these facts and also the explanation of them which Fresnel had given, thought about the subject, and he predicted that, by looking through certain crystals in a particular direction, we should see not two dots, but a continuous circle. Mr. Lloyd made the experiment, and saw the circle a result which had never been even suspected. This has always been considered one of most signal instances of scientific thought in the domain of physics. It is most distinctly an application of experience, gained under certain circumstances, to entirely different circumstances.
Now, suppose that, the night before coming down to Brighton, you had dreamed of a railway accident, caused by the engine getting frightened at a flock of sheep, and jumping suddenly back over all the carriages; the result of which was that your head was unfortunately cut off, so that you had to put it in your hat-box, and take it back home to be mended. There are, I fear, many persons, even at this day, who would tell you that, after such a dream, it was unwise to travel by railway to Brighton. This is a proposal that you should take experience gained while you are asleep, when you have no common-sense—experience about a phantom-railway—and apply it to guide you when you are awake, and have common-sense, in your dealings with a real railway. And yet this proposal is not dictated by scientific thought.
Now, let us take the great example of biology. I pass over the process of classification, which itself requires a great deal of scientific thought, in particular when a naturalist, who has studied and monographed a fauna or a flora rather than a family, is able at once to pick out the distinguishing characters required for the subdivision of an order quite new to him. Suppose that we possess all this minute and comprehensive knowledge of plants and animals and intermediate organisms, their affinities and differences, their structures and functions—a vast body of experience, collected by incalculable labor and devotion. Then comes Mr. Herbert Spencer; he takes that experience of life which is not human, which is apparently stationary, going on in exactly the same way from year to year, and he applies that to tell us how to deal with the changing characters of human nature and human society. How is it that experience of this sort, vast as it is, can guide us in a matter so different from itself? How does scientific thought, applied to the development of a kangaroo-fœtus, or the movement of the sap in exogens, make prediction possible for the first time in that most important of all sciences, the relations of man with man?
In the dark or unscientific ages men had another way of applying experience to altered circumstances. They believed, for example, that the plant called jew's-ear, which does bear a certain resemblance to the human ear, was a useful cure for diseases of that organ. This doctrine of "signatures," as it was called, exercised an enormous influence on the medicine of the time. I need hardly tell you that it is hopelessly unscientific; yet it agrees with those other examples that we have ​been considering in this particular: that it applies experience about the shape of a plant—which is one circumstance connected with it—to dealings with its medicinal properties, which are other and different circumstances. Again, suppose that you had been frightened by a thunder-storm on land, or your heart had failed you in a storm at sea; if any one then told you that, in consequence of this, you should always cultivate an unpleasant sensation in the pit of your stomach, till you took delight in it—that you should regulate your sane and sober life by the sensations of a moment of unreasoning terror; this advice would not be an example of scientific thought. Yet it would be an application of past experience to new and different circumstances.
But you will already have observed what is the additional clause that we must add to our definition in order to describe scientific thought, and that only. The step between experience about animals and dealings with changing humanity is the law of evolution. The step from errors in the calculated places of Uranus to the existence of Neptune is the law of gravitation. The step from the observed behavior of crystals to conical refraction is made up of laws of light and geometry. The step from old bridges to new ones is the laws of elasticity and the strength of materials.
The step, then, from past experience to new circumstances must be made in accordance with an observed uniformity in the order of events. This uniformity has held good in the past in certain places; if it should also hold good in the future, and in other places, then, being combined with our experience of the past, it enables us to predict the future, and to know what is going on elsewhere, so that we are able to regulate our conduct in accordance with this knowledge.
The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances: the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience. I now want to consider this uniformity a little more closely, to show how the character of scientific thought and the force of its inferences depend upon the character of the uniformity of Nature. I cannot, of course, tell you all that is known of this character without writing an encyclopædia, but I shall confine myself to two points of it, about which, it seems to me, that just now there is something to be said. I want to find out what we mean when we say that the uniformity of Nature is exact; and what we mean when we say that it is reasonable.
When a student is first introduced to those sciences which have come under the dominion of mathematics, a new and wonderful aspect of Nature bursts upon his view. He has been accustomed to regard things as essentially more or less vague. All the facts that he has ​hitherto known have been expressed qualitatively, with a little allowance for error on either side. Things which are let go fall to the ground. A very observant man may know also that they fall faster as they go along. But our student is shown that, after falling for one second in a vacuum, a body is going at the rate of thirty-two feet per second; that after falling for two seconds it is going twice as fast; after going two and a half seconds, two and a half times as fast. If he makes the experiment, and finds a single inch per second too much or too little in the rate, one of two things must have happened: either the law of falling bodies has been wrongly stated, or the experiment is not accurate—there is some mistake. He finds reason to think that the latter is always the case: the more carefully he goes to work, the more of the error turns out to belong to the experiment. Again, he may know that water consists of two gases, oxygen and hydrogen, combined; but he now learns that two pints of steam at a temperature of 150° centigrade will always make two pints of hydrogen and one pint of oxygen at the same temperature, all of them being pressed as much as the atmosphere is pressed. If he makes the experiment and gets rather more or less than a pint of oxygen, is the law disproved? No; the steam was impure, or there was some mistake. Myriads of analyses attest the law of combining volumes; the more carefully they are made, the more nearly they coincide with it. The aspects of the faces of a crystal are connected together by a geometrical law, by which, four of them being given, the rest can be found. The place of a planet at a given time is calculated by the law of gravitation; if it is half a second wrong, the fault is in the instrument, the observer, the clock, or the law; now, the more observations are made, the more of this fault is brought home to the instrument, the observer, and the clock. It is no wonder, then, that our student, contemplating these and many like instances, should be led to say: "I have been short-sighted; but I have now put on the spectacles of science which Nature had prepared for my eyes; I see that things have definite outlines, that the world is ruled by exact and rigid mathematical laws; καὶ σύ, θεός, γεωμετρεῖς." It is our business to consider whether he is right in so concluding. Is the uniformity of Nature absolutely exact, or only more exact than our experiments?
At this point we have to make a very important distinction. There are two ways in which a law may be inaccurate. The first way is exemplified by that law of Galileo which I mentioned just now: that a body falling in vacuo acquires equal increase in velocity in equal times. No matter how many feet per second it is going, after an interval of a second it will be going thirty-two more feet per second. We now know that this rate of increase is not exactly the same at different heights, that it depends upon the distance of the body from the centre of the earth; so that the law is only approximate; instead of the increase of velocity being exactly equal in equal times, it itself ​increases very slowly as the body falls. We know also that this variation of the law from the truth is too small to be perceived by direct observation on the change of velocity. But suppose we have invented means for observing this, and have verified that the increase of velocity is inversely as the squared distance from the earth's centre. Still the law is not accurate; for the earth does not attract accurately toward her centre, and the direction of attraction is continually varying with the motion of the sea; the body will not even fall in a straight line. The sun and the planets, too, especially the moon, will produce deviations; yet the sum of all these errors will escape our new process of observation, by being a great deal smaller than the necessary errors of that observation. But when these again have been allowed for, there is still the influence of the stars. In this case, however, we only give up one exact law for another. It may still be held that if the effect of every particle of matter in the universe on the falling body were calculated according to the law of gravitation, the body would move exactly as this calculation required. And if it were objected that the body must be slightly magnetic or diamagnetic, while there are magnets not an infinite way off; that a very minute repulsion, even at sensible distances, accompanies the attraction; it might be replied that these phenomena are themselves subject to exact laws, and that, when all the laws have been taken into account, the actual motion will exactly correspond with the calculated motion.
I suppose there is hardly a physical student (unless he has specially considered the matter) who would not at once assent to the statement I have just made; that, if we knew all about it, Nature would be found universally subject to exact numerical laws. But let us just consider for another moment what this means.
The word "exact" has a practical and a theoretical meaning. When a grocer weighs you out a certain quantity of sugar very carefully, and says it is exactly a pound, he means that the difference between the mass of the sugar and that of the pound-weight he employs is too small to be detected by his scales. If a chemist had made a special investigation, wishing to be as accurate as he could, and told you this was exactly a pound of sugar, he would mean that the mass of the sugar differed from that of a certain standard piece of platinum by a quantity too small to be detected by his means of weighing, which are a thousandfold more accurate than the grocer's. But what would a mathematician mean, if he made the same statement? He would mean this. Suppose the mass of the standard pound to be represented by a length, say a foot, measured on a certain line; so that half a pound would be represented by six inches, and so on. And let the difference between the mass of the sugar and that of the standard pound be drawn upon the same line to the same scale. Then, if that difference were magnified an infinite number of times, it would still be invisible. This is the theoretical meaning of exactness; the ​practical meaning is only very close approximation; how close, depends upon the circumstances. The knowledge, then, of an exact law in the theoretical sense would be equivalent to an infinite observation. I do not say that such knowledge is impossible to man; but I do say that it would be absolutely different in kind from any knowledge that we possess at present.
I shall be told, no doubt, that we do possess a great deal of knowledge of this kind, in the form of geometry and mechanics; and that it is just the example of these sciences that has led men to look for exactness in other quarters. If this had been said to me in the last century, I should not have known what to reply. But it happens that about the beginning of the present century the foundations of geometry were criticised independently by two mathematicians, Lobatschewsky and the immortal Gauss; whose results have been extended and generalized more recently by Riemann and Helmholtz. And the conclusion to which these investigations lead is that although the assumptions which were very properly made by the ancient geometers are practically exact—that is to say, more exact than experiment can be—for such finite things as we have to deal with, and such portions of space as we can reach; yet the truth of them for very much larger things, or very much smaller things, or parts of space which are at present beyond our reach, is a matter to be decided by experiment, when its powers are considerably increased. I want to make as clear as possible the real state of this question at present, because it is often supposed to be a question of words or metaphysics, whereas it is a very distinct and simple question of fact. I am supposed to know, then, that the three angles of a rectilinear triangle are exactly equal to two right angles. Now, suppose that three points are taken in space, distant from one another as far as the sun is from α Centauri, and that the shortest distances between these points are drawn so as to form a triangle. And suppose the angles of this triangle to be very accurately measured and added together; this can at present be done so accurately that the error shall certainly be less than one minute, less therefore than the five-thousandth part of a right angle. Then I do not know that this sum would differ at all from two right angles; but also I do not know that the difference would be less than ten degrees, or the ninth part of a right angle. And I have reasons for not knowing.
This example is exceedingly important as showing the connection ​between exactness and universality. It is found that the deviation, if it exists, must be nearly proportional to the area of the triangle. So that the error in the case of a triangle whose sides are a mile long would be obtained by dividing that in the case I have just been considering by four hundred quadrillions; the result must be a quantity inconceivably small, which no experiment could detect. But between this inconceivably small error and no error at all, there is fixed an enormous gulf—the gulf between practical and theoretical exactness, and what is even more important, the gulf between what is practically universal and what is theoretically universal. I say that a law is practically universal which is more exact than experiment for all cases that might be got at by such experiment as we have. We assume this kind of universality, and we find that it pays us to assume it. But a law would be theoretically universal if it were true of all cases whatever; and this is what we do not know of any law at all.
I said there were two ways in which a law might be inexact. There is a law of gases which asserts that when you compress a perfect gas the pressure of the gas increases exactly in the proportion in which the volume diminishes. Exactly; that is to say, the law is more accurate than the experiment, and experiments are corrected by means of the law. But it so happens that this law has been explained; we know precisely what it is that happens when a gas is compressed. We know that a gas consists of a vast number of separate molecules, rushing about in all directions with all manner of velocities, but so that the mean velocity of the molecules of air in this room, for example, is about twenty miles a minute. The pressure of the gas on any surface with which it is in contact is nothing more than the impact of these small particles upon it. On any surface large enough to be seen there are millions of these impacts in a second. If the space in which the gas is confined be diminished, the average rate at which the impacts take place will be increased in the same proportion; and, because of the enormous number of them, the actual rate is always exceedingly close to the average. But the law is one of statistics; its accuracy depends on the enormous numbers involved; and so, from the nature of the case, its exactness cannot be theoretical or absolute.
Nearly all the laws of gases have received these statistical explanations; electric and magnetic attraction and repulsion have been treated in a similar manner; and an hypothesis of this sort has been suggested even for the law of gravity. On the other hand, the manner in which the molecules of a gas interfere with each other proves that they repel one another inversely as the fifth power of the distance; so that we here find, at the basis of a statistical explanation, a law which has the form of theoretical exactness. Which of these forms is to win? It seems to me, again, that we do not know, and that the recognition of our ignorance is the surest way to get rid of it.
The world, in general, has made just the remark that I have ​attributed to a fresh student of the applied sciences. As the discoveries of Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Dalton, Cavendish, Gauss, displayed ever-new phenomena following mathematical laws, the theoretical exactness of the physical universe was taken for granted. Now, when people are hopelessly ignorant of a thing, they quarrel about the source of their knowledge. Accordingly, many maintained that we know these exact laws by intuition. These said always one true thing, that we did not know them from experience. Others said that they were really given in the facts, and adopted ingenious ways of hiding the gulf between the two. Others, again, deduced from transcendental considerations sometimes the laws themselves, and sometimes what, through imperfect information, they supposed to be the laws. But more serious consequences arose when these conceptions derived from physics were carried over into the field of Biology. Sharp lines of division were made between kingdoms, and classes, and orders; an animal was described as a miracle to the vegetable world; specific differences, which are practically permanent within the range of history, were regarded as permanent through all time; a sharp line was drawn between organic and inorganic matter. Further investigation, however, has shown that accuracy had been prematurely attributed to the science, and has filled up all the gulfs and gaps that hasty observers had invented. The animal and vegetable kingdoms have a debatable ground between them, occupied by beings that have the characters of both, and yet belong distinctly to neither. Classes and orders shade into one another all along their common boundary. Specific differences turn out to be the work of time. The line dividing organic matter from inorganic, if drawn to-day, must be moved to-morrow to another place; and the chemist will tell you that the distinction has now no place in his science except in a technical sense for the convenience of studying carbon compounds by themselves. In geology the same tendency gave birth to the doctrine of distinct periods, marked out by the character of the strata deposited in them all over the sea; a doctrine than which, perhaps, no ancient cosmogony has been further from the truth, or done more harm to the progress of science. Refuted many years ago by Mr. Herbert Spencer, it has now fairly yielded to an attack from all sides at once, and may be left in peace.
When, then, we say that the uniformity which we observe in the course of events is exact and universal, we mean no more than this: that we are able to state general rules which are far more exact than direct experiment, and which apply to all cases that we are at present likely to come across. It is important to notice, however, the effect of such exactness as we observe upon the nature of inference. When a telegram arrived stating that Dr. Livingstone had been found by Mr. Stanley, what was the process by which you inferred the finding of ​Dr. Livingstone from the appearance of the telegram? You assumed over and over again the existence of uniformity in Nature. That the newspapers had behaved as they generally do in regard to telegraphic messages; that the clerks had followed the known laws of the action of clerks; that electricity had behaved in the cable exactly as it behaves in the laboratory; that the actions of Mr. Stanley were related to his motives by the same uniformities that affect the actions of other men; that Dr. Livingstone's handwriting conformed to the curious rule by which an ordinary man's handwriting may be recognized as having persistent characteristics even at different periods of his life. But you had a right to be much more sure about some of these inferences than about others. The law of electricity was known with practical exactness, and the conclusions derived from it were the surest things of all—the law about the handwriting, belonging to a portion of physiology which is unconnected with consciousness, was known with less, but still with considerable accuracy. But the laws of human action in which consciousness is concerned are still so far from being completely analyzed and reduced to an exact form, that the inferences which you made by their help were felt to have only a provisional force. It is possible that by-and-by, when psychology has made enormous advances and become an exact science, we may be able to give to testimony the sort of weight which we give to the inferences of physical science. It will then be possible to conceive a case which will show how completely the whole process of inference depends on our assumption of uniformity. Suppose that testimony, having reached the ideal force I have imagined, were to assert that a certain river runs up-hill? You could infer nothing at all. The arm of inference would be paralyzed, and the sword of truth broken in its grasp; and reason could only sit down and wait until recovery restored her limb, and further experience gave her new weapons.—Advance Sheets from Macmillan.
* ↑ A Lecture delivered before the members of the British Association, at Brighton, August 19, 1872.
* ↑ "On Braced Arches and Suspension Bridges." Edinburgh, Neill, 1870.
* ↑ "Geometrische Untersuchungen zur Theorie der Parallellinien," Berlin, 1840. Translated by Hoüel, Gauthier-Villars, 1866.
* ↑ Letter to Schumacher, November 28, 1846 (refers to 1792).
* ↑ "Ueber die Hypothesen welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen," Göttingen Abhandl., 1866-'67. Translated by Hoüel in Annali di Matematica, Milan, vol. iii.
* ↑ "The Axioms of Geometry," Academy, vol. i., p. 128 (a popular exposition).
* ↑ Assuming that parallax observations prove the deviation less than half a second for a triangle whose vertex is at the star and base a diameter of the earth's orbit.
* ↑ "Illogical Geology," in Essays, vol. i. Originally published in 1859.