The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1890-05-23
SCIENCE AND INVENTION.

SCIENCE AND INVENTION.
Theory and Practice Usually Develop In
Different Ways.
In olden times, men of science, and
especially those who have done most to
forward the growth of natural philos-
ophy, did not despise manual labor and
handicraft. Calico made his telescopes
with his own hands. Newton learned
in his boyhood the art of managing tools;
he exercised his young mind in contriv-
ing most ingenious machines, and when
he began his researches in optics he was
able himself to grind the lenses for his
instruments and himself to make the
we'll known telescope which, for the
time was fine piece of workmanship
Leibnitz was fond of inventing ma
chines-wind-mills and carriages to be
moved without horses preoccupied his
mind as much as mathematical and
philosophical speculatiOns. Linn8us be-
came botanist while helping his father
"a practical gardener-in his daily
work. In short, with our great geniuses
handicraft was no obstacle to abstract
researches-it rather favored them. On
the other hand, if the workers of old
found but few opportunities for master
ing science, many of them had, at least,
their intelligence stimulated by the very
variety of work which was performed in
the then unspecialized workshops; and
some of them had the benefit of familiar
intercourse with men of science. Watt
and Rennie were friends with Prof.
Robson; Brindley, the road-maker,
despite his fourteen pence day
wages, enjoyed intercourse with
educated society, and thus de-
veloped his remarkable engineering
faculties. While industry, especially
by the end of the last century and dur
ing the first part of the present, has
been inventing on such scale as to
revolutionize the very face of the earth,
science has been losing it's inventive
powers. Scientists invent no more, or
very little. Is it not striking, indeed,
that the steam-engine, even in it's lead
ing principles, the railway-engine, the
steamboat, the telephone, the phono-
graph the weavingmachine, the lace
machine the lighthouse, the macadam-
lied road photography in black and
colors, and thousands of less important
things, have not been invented by pro-
fessional scientists, although none of
them would have refused to associate
his name with any of the named inven-
tions? Men who hardly had received
any education at school, who had merely
stolen the crumbs of knowledge from
iob 40
ments with the most primitive means
the attorney clerk Smeaton, the instru-
ment-maker Watt, the engine-brakes
man Stephenson, the jewelers. appren-
tice Fulton, the m ll-wright Rennie, the
mason Telford, and hundreds of others
whose names remain unknown, were, as
Mr.. Smiles justly says, ''the real makers
of modern civilizations" while the pro-
fessional scientists, provided with all
means for acquiring knowledge and ex-
perimenting, have invented little in
the formidable array of Implements,
machines and prime-motors which
have shown to humanity how to utilize
and to manage the forces of nature
The fact is striking, but it's explanation
is very simple: those men-the Watts
and the Stephensons-knew something
which the sa0ants do not know-tbey
knew the use of their hands; their sur
rOundingS stimulated their inventive
powers; they knew machines, their
leading principles and their work; they
had breathed the atmosphere of the
workshop and the building-yard. We
know how the scientists will meet the
reproach. They Will say: "We dis
cover the laws of nature, let others ap-
ply them; it is a simple division of la
bOr." But such rejoinder would be
utterly untrue. The march of progress
is quite the reverse, because in a hun
dred cases against one the mechanical
inven ton comes before the discovery of
the scientific law. 1t was not the dy-
namical theory of heat which came be-
fore the steam engine-it followed it.
When thousands of engines already
were Transforming heat into motion I'M
der the eyes of thousands of scientists
and when they had done so for half
century, or more; when thousands of
trains, stopped by powerful brakes,
were disengaging heat and spreading
thousands of sparks on the rails at their
approach to the stations; when all over
the civilized world heavy hammers and
perfOratOrS were rendering burning hot
the masses of iron they were hammer
ing and perforating-then, and then
only, doctor, Mayer, ventured to bring
out the mechanical theory of heat with
all its consequences; and yet the
scientists almost drove him to
madness by obstinately clinging
to their mysterious calorie fluid
When every engine was illustrating the
impossibility of utilizing all the heat
disengaged by given amount of burnt
fuel, then came the law of Clausus
When all over the world industry al
ready was Transforming motion into
heat sound, light and electricity, and
each one into each other, then only came
Groves theory of the correlation of phys
ical forces" 1t was not the theory of cleo
tricity which gave us the telegraph.
When the telegraph was invented all we
knew about electricity was but few
facts more or less badly arranged in our
books; the theory of electricity is not
ready yet, it still waits for it's Newton,
Notwithstanding the brilliant attempts
of late years Even the empirical
knowledge of the laws of electrical cur
rents was in its infancy when few bold
men laid cable at the bottom of the
Atlantic ocean, despite the warnings of
the authorized men of science. The
name of applied science" is quite mis-
leading, because, in the major ty of
cases, invention far from being an
application of science, on the contrary
creates a new branch of science. The
American bridges were no annlication of