The morning call., 1893-08-28
MODERN SCIENCE.

II WAS well Sdlu, dl Tue opening Ol JU0
Congress of Scientists now in session at
Chicago. that the difference between mod
ern science and the science of the seven
teenth and eighteenth centuries was that
the latter added nothing to the comfort or
the wealth of mankind. while every step in
the former had promoted the material
interest of humanity. Mr. Huxley OBJ
served that Newton's Principia yielded no
practical fruit, that Descartes and Leib-
niiZ opened up new worlds, Pascal and
Torreelli weighed the air. and a firm
foundation was laid for the sciences of
botany, geology, chemistry and biology
without leading to a single step in the
progress of practical mechanics, whereas
the scientific discoveries of the nine
teenth century have in every case made
life easier and raised both the capacity
and the quality of the human mind.
The effect of the discovery Of steam nav
igation and of the telegraph has been to
assimilate races which had been antag-
Onistic and to break down the barriers of
prOvinc:alism and race prejudice. 1t has
brought the nations into one family and
has made religions more humane and pol
icles broader. 1t has set knowledge free
from traditions and has stimulated research
by the force of emulation. Before Full
toms steamboat, and before MOrse'S tel
egraph wires, the spirit of inquiry was
Sti1ed by the incubus of superstition; the
very professors who could not deny the
| law Of gravitatiOn or the circulation of the
blood denied the right of historians 10 crit
icize the chronology of the Pentateuch and
denounced the lesson of the old red sand
stone as flying in the face of revelation.
Diffused knowledge has brought the church
in:o line with advanced scientific discovery
and has taught all classes that there can
never be any danger in the honest pursuit
of ruth.
How much domestic life has been i'm
proved by the discoveries of Siemens it
were hard to say; without those dIscov-
cries neither the science Of transportation
nor modern architecture could have
reached their present advanced stage.
Nor could the science of medicine or that
of alimentatlon have been as forward as
they are but for the organic analyses of
Liebg and his followers. 1t never oc-
Cured to the chemists who first began TO
experiment with coal tar that they were
going TO revOlutoniZe therapeutics they
| had nothing in view but the utilization of
by-product thus far useless; but even
now we do not begin to realize what bless
ings they may have conferred on man
kind.
What we may expect in the future from
the development of chemical ANALYSIS IT ay
be inferred from the Indifferent. almost
contemptuOus, way In which Edison re-
fers TO the manufacture Of sapphres. The
sapphire is corundum. consisting Of pure
alumina. Ii is as valuable as the dia-
mond, and has been supposed to be a nat
ural stone which cannot be successfully
initiated. Now Edison talks of making
sapphire as he might talk of
making corncake. And if fur.
naceman. by exposing common clay to an
electric heat of four thousand degrees
can produce metallic aluminium. there is
no reason why the Wizard of Menlo
should not bake a dish of sapphires for
the jewellers. If he can. there Is no reason
why he should stop there. All terrestrial
| objects. from the body of a man to a lump
OF clay, consist IF the same ingredients
combined in varying proportions and
under varying conditions. There are a
few score substances which chemists have
thus far been unable to resolve into their
original elements, but of these less than a
dozen enter into the composition of ordi-
nary animal and vegetable and mineral
objects. Analysis shows that the brain of
a Tennyson is made of the same sub
! stances as brick which is mortared in a
/ wall; and that the mud which a child
mods into pie contains every element
which is found Ia the most succulen
! canvasback duck.
| When Edison has supplied the market
with sapphires so that they are sold by the
pint, perhaps he will turn his science tC
account in decompOsing common soil and
reproducing it in the shape of game pies
! Science has accomplished more arduous
! feats than that.