The Scientific Basis of National Progress, Including that of Morality

PREFACE

As there exists at the present time in this country a considerable degree of uneasiness in the public mind respecting our ability to maintain our position in the race of progress, and as our future success as a nation depends largely upon science, it is desirable to call attention to the great public importance of new scientific knowledge, and to the means of promoting its development.

Although the illustrations given in this book of the importance of such knowledge to mankind, constitute but a small fraction of the number which might be adduced, they are sufficient to show that by the neglect of scientific investigation, we are sacrificing our welfare as a nation to an enormous extent.

The greatest obstacle to the discovery of new knowledge in this country, lies in a wide spread ignorance of the dependence of human welfare upon scientific research. I propose therefore to show in a brief manner, that the essential starting-point of human progress, lies in scientific discovery; also that new truths are evolved by original research made in accordance with scientific methods; and to illustrate these statements by examples; also to point out how such research can be encouraged.

The book is divided into four chapters, viz.: 1st. The Scientific basis of Material progress: 2nd. The Scientific basis of Mental and Moral progress: 3rd. New truth and its relation to Human progress: and 4th. The Promotion of original Scientific Research. As the object of the book is only to call attention to the vast importance of new truth, as as a fundamental source of advance, and how to promote the discovery of it, the essay is written as briefly as possible, and is not offered in any sense as a complete exposition of the subject, especially the section relating to the Scientific basis of Morality.

The leading idea of the Book is that present knowledge only enables us to maintain our present state, that national progress is the result of new ideas, and that the chief source of new ideas is original research.1 That as advance has its origin in new knowledge; unless new discoveries are made, new inventions and improvements must sooner or later cease. Another prominent idea is, that truth is essentially the same in all divisions of knowledge, and that the mental powers and processes employed in detecting it are the same in all subjects.

For reasons stated in the text, the influence of scientific discovery upon mental and moral progress are treated together. Notwithstanding the far greater importance of the mental and moral advantages of new truths, the book treats chiefly of the pecuniary and material gains to mankind; mainly because the latter are more easily understood and appreciated, the chapter however on "The Scientific Basis of Mental and Moral progress," indicates in a very brief and imperfect manner, the vast importance of new scientific knowledge to mankind, as a source of mental and moral advancement.

The chief object of this book is to disseminate more correct ideas respecting the importance of new positive knowledge, and the duties of society in relation to it; and a further object is to assist in maintaining Birmingham in the front rank of intellectual, social and moral advance, in accordance with its motto "Forward."

CHAPTER I.

The Scientific Basis of Material Progress

During the last one hundred years this nation has advanced with unexampled speed. More wealth has been accumulated by Englishmen since the commencement of the present century, than in all preceding time since the period of Julius Cæsar; one of the causes of this has been the discovery of new truths of science, and their subservience to useful purposes by means of invention. The great manufacturing success of this country has been largely due to those applications of science, which have enabled us to utilise our abundant stores of coal and iron-ore, in steam engines, machinery, and a multitude of mechanical, physical, and chemical processes; also to the discovery of electro-magnetism and its application in the electric-telegraph, etc. And had it not been for these and other adaptations of scientific knowledge, we should have competed in vain with the cheaper labour and longer days of toil of continental nations. Other great causes, such as our insular position, suitable climate, freedom, geographical position, etc., etc. have, however, also contributed to the result. Commerce also in its turn has done vast things for mankind.

The purely scientific knowledge we possess was discovered almost entirely by means of original research, and to only a small extent by persons engaged in industrial occupations. Probably not two per cent. of all the important discoveries in pure science were made in manufactories; the scientific experiments which are made in such establishments are usually of the nature of invention, not of discovery, and are not often published, because it is a usual object with men of business to retain as much as possible of the pecuniary benefit of their labours to themselves. Whilst it is the object of a business man to monopolise special knowledge; that of the scientific man is to diffuse it, in order that all mankind may be benefited and helped to improve.

Discoveries in science are, however, occasionally made by practical men engaged in technical employments. The hydro-electric machine originated in this way, a man at Newcastle was attending to a steam boiler, and found that he received electric shocks when he touched the boiler. This circumstance was investigated by his employer, Mr. Armstrong, a scientific man, and led him to construct the hydro-electric machine. The accumulation of electricity in submarine telegraph cables was first observed at the Gutta-Percha Company's works London. It was noticed on testing a cable by means of a voltaic battery (the cable being submerged in water) that discharges of electricity flowed from the cable after the battery was removed; this circumstance was investigated by Faraday, and led to improvements in submarine telegraphy. In each of these instances the same general method as that used by scientific discoverers was however employed, viz., new experiments were made (though not intentionally) by putting matter and its forces under new conditions, and new results were observed.

Nearly all great modern scientific discoveries have been made by teachers of science and others, who spend a large portion of their lives in experimental investigation, searching for new truths, and not by persons who have hit upon them by accident. The greatest discoveries in physics and chemistry in modern times, were made chiefly by such men as Newton, Cavendish, Scheele, Priestley, Oersted, Volta, Davy and Faraday: all great workers in science.

It is either by observing matter and its forces under new conditions or from a new aspect, that nearly all discoveries are made; thus Priestley placed some oxide of mercury in an inverted glass vessel, and heated it by means of the Sun's rays and a lens, and discovered Oxygen. This substance was nearly discovered by Eck de Sulsbach three hundred years before; he heated six pounds of an amalgam of silver and mercury, and converted the latter metal into a red oxide like cinnabar, and he remarked, "a spirit is united with the metal, and what proves it is this, that this artificial cinnabar submitted to distillation, disengages that spirit." The "spirit" was evidently oxygen.

Some discoveries are made by observing the phenomena of bodies placed under special conditions by those operations of nature over which we have little or no control. All our knowledge of Astronomy, and much of that of geology and physiology, was acquired in this way.

Nearly all modern discoveries of importance in physics or chemistry require long and difficult investigations to be made in order to completely establish their truth. When Crookes discovered Thallium, he saw the first sign of its existence in a momentary flash of green light in a spectroscope, but he had to expend upon the subject several years of most difficult labour, and a considerable sum of money, in order to prove the correctness of his suspicion that he had discovered a new metal. M. Lecocq de Boisbaudran discovered the metal Gallium and Bunsen discovered Rubidium and Caesium in a similar manner.

Discoveries in science, are usually made, not by trying to obtain some valuable commercial or technical result, but by making new, reliable, and systematic investigations. By investigating the chemical action of electricity upon saline bodies, Sir Humphrey Davy isolated sodium and magnesium, which has led to the establishment at Patricroft near Manchester, of the manufactures of those metals. By the abstract researches of Hofmann and others upon Coal-tar, many new compounds were discovered, and the extremely profitable manufacture of the splendid coal-tar dyes was originated.

Scientific discovery is the most valuable in its ultimate practical results when it is pursued from a love of truth as the ruling motive, and any attempt to make it more directly and quickly remunerative by trying to direct it to immediately practical objects, decreases the importance of its results, diminishes the spirit of inquiry, and sooner or later reduces it to the character of invention. The greatest practical realities of this age had their origin in a search after important truths entirely irrespective of what utilities they might lead to.

I do not intend by these remarks to imply that any new trades or improvements in manufactures have been or can be effected without the labours of inventors and practical men, but that there should be a more judicious division of labour: one man to discover new truths, another to put them into the form of practical inventions, and the business man to work them; because it is proved by experience, that in nearly all cases these different kinds of labour require men of widely different habits of mind, and that the faculties of discovery, invention, and practical working are very rarely united in one man.

Scientific investigations however, made in a manufactory, for the purpose of ascertaining the various sources of loss of materials, the circumstances which affect the amount or quality of the product; or made with the object of substituting cheaper or more suitable materials, or for varying their proportions, or for many other kindred objects, have in many cases resulted in great benefit to the manufacturer, and have formed the basis of successful patents. Some of the large brewers, chemical manufacturers, candle companies, and many others, constantly employ scientific men in this way to examine their materials, processes and products, and keep them acquainted with the progress of discovery and invention in relation to their own particular trades.

No art or manufacture is so perfect as to be exempt from the influence of discovery and invention, and no man can produce so perfect an article but that, by the aid of science, a better may be produced. Science and trade are mutually dependent, without the assistance of science, trade would be unable to supply our daily increasing wants, and without the pecuniary support of trade, science would languish and decay.

"As long as arts and manufactures are left to be directed and improved by simple experience, their progress is extremely slow, but directly scientific knowledge is successfully applied to them, they bound forward with astonishing speed." Look at the art of taking portraits; for hundreds of years it remained entirely in the hands of oil and water-colour painters with but little progress in rapidity of production, but directly science was applied to it in the form of photography, its advance in this respect became amazing. Fifty years ago photography was almost unknown, but immediately Messrs. Daguerre and Talbot, in 1844, made known their processes, the new art began to advance, and so rapid has been its progress, that at the present time many thousand persons are employed in its exercise, and millions of portraits have been taken with an accuracy and at a cost quite beyond the reach of the old method.

Many persons hardly know the difference between science and art; a still greater number cannot readily distinguish between a concrete science and a pure one; and nearly all persons confound discovery with invention. A science may be conveniently defined as a collection of facts and general principles which are to be learned; an art as a collection of rules which are to be followed: – Art therefore is applied science; and every art also has a basis in science, whether that basis has been discovered or not. Scientific principles underlie not only manufacturing processes, but also sculpture, music, poetry and painting.

Discoveries differ also from inventions: a scientific discovery is a newly found truth in science, which in the great majority of cases is not in the form of applied knowledge. An invention is usually a combination and application to some desired purpose, of scientific truths which have been previously discovered. When Oersted first observed a magnetic needle move by means of a current of electricity, he made a scientific discovery; but when Wheatstone and Cooke applied Oersted's discovery in their telegraph from Paddington to Slough, they made an invention. The success of the electro-plating process was dependent upon knowledge previously discovered. Mr. Wright, a surgeon in Birmingham, was led to the invention of the use of cyanide of potassium in electro-plating and gilding, by reading in Scheele's "Chemical Essay" (p.p. 405 and 406), that "if after these calces" (i. e., the cyanides of gold and silver) "have been precipitated, a sufficient quantity of precipitating liquor be added, in order to redissolve them, the solution remains clear in the open air, and in this state the ærial acid" (i. e., carbonic acid of the air) "does not reprecipitate the metallic calx."

Immediately a discovery is effected it is made public, and is afterwards incorporated in the ordinary text books of science, ready for the use of inventors; and in this way such books have become filled with valuable knowledge acquired by researches in past times. All this knowledge (which has cost millions of pounds and a vast amount of intellect and labour) has been given by its discoverers freely to the nation. Some idea of the number of scientific researches which have been made since the year 1800, may be obtained from the fact, that a mere list of their titles, with the names of the authors, occupies eight large quarto volumes, of about one thousand pages each, compiled and published at a cost of about ten thousand pounds, by the British Government and the Royal Society.

In discovery we search for new phenomena, their causes and relations; in invention we seek to produce new effects, or to produce known effects in an improved manner. The objects of the scientific discoverer are, new truth and greater accuracy; whereas those of the inventor, are increased usefulness and economy of results. The ancients classed inventors with the gods, because they considered them great benefactors to the human race. Discoverers may properly be viewed as priests and prophets of truth, because they both reveal new knowledge to mankind, and predict with certainty coming events.

A man cannot usually invent an improvement unless he possesses scientific knowledge, and, for that knowledge he must in nearly all cases resort to a scientific book or teacher. The great practical value of new scientific knowledge is proved by the fact, that when scientific discoveries are published, there are numerous inventors and practical men, who immediately endeavour to apply them to useful purposes. Since the first application of coal-tar to the production of dyes, every discovery in that branch of chemistry has been closely watched for a similar purpose.

A complete account of the growth and development of scientific discoveries and inventions would form an extensive history, and would include numerous instances of experiments attended by results which, sooner or later, affected all mankind. Take that of phosphorus, for example. The first evidence of the existence of that substance was obtained by the Saracens in the eighth century. Achild Bechil distilled a powdered mixture of charcoal, clay, lime, and dried extract of urine, and obtained a substance which shone in the dark "like a good moon;" that substance was phosphorus. The discovery contained in the results of that little dirty and stinking experiment was the germ or seed of all the subsequent developments and applications of phosphorus. About the year 1669 Bechil's experiment was further developed by Brandt, a merchant of Hamburg, and the publication of the wonderful properties of the substance produced a great sensation in his fellow-citizens. "There was then cried nothing but triumph and victory among the chymists. Those good people erected already in their thoughts so many hospitals and poor-houses that no beggar should more molest any man in the streets, made great legacies, and pious causes, and what not else." "Besides, the other alchymists did encourage him yet more, and desisted not to make him believe how this was the same fiery ghost of Moses that in the beginning moved upon the water, yea, his splendid shining face: the fiery pillar in the desert, that secret fire of the altar wherewith Moses burned the golden calf before he strewed it upon the fire and made it potable."

The experiment of Brandt was repeated by Kunckel before the courts of Saxony and Brandenburg, although it was not a very delicate or agreeable exhibition, "because the anctuous and daubing oyliness was not yet accurately separated from it, and without doubt it was very stinking." Brandt's process was further developed by Boyle, and published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in the year 1692-3; and phosphorus was afterwards obtained in larger quantity and in a purer state by Hanckwitz, a chemist in Southampton Street, Strand, and sold by him at three pounds sterling per ounce. Its price at present is less than three shillings per pound.

Margraaf, Fourcroy, Vauquelin, and Dr. Slare also extended our knowledge of the substance; Gahn, in 1769, made the important discovery of phosphorus in bones, and Scheele immediately devised the process now in use by our manufacturers for extracting it from that substance. The commencement of the use of phosphorus for the purpose of getting a light occurred about the year 1803, but it was not until the year 1833 that the invention of phosphorus matches became commercially successful. The use of such matches is now universal, and it has been estimated that the daily consumption of them in Great Britain alone amounts to two hundred and fifty millions, or more than eight matches per day for each individual in the kingdom.

"There is nothing on the Earth so small that it may not produce great things." The most abstract and apparently trivial experiments in original research have in some cases led to inventions and results of national and even world-wide importance. The contractions of a frog's leg in the experiments of Galvani, and the movements of a magnetic needle in those of Oersted, have already led to the expenditure of hundreds of millions of pounds in laying telegraph wires all over the earth, and to an immense extension of international intercourse. But the original experiment of Oersted was not discovered without labour, it was only arrived at after many years of research.

The saying that "all great things have had small beginnings," is true, not only of electric telegraphs, but also of the great trade of electro-plating, and of the magneto-electric machine which is now largely used instead of the voltaic battery. After Volta had made his small and apparently unimportant experiments on the electricity produced by metals and liquids, various persons tried the effect of that electricity upon metallic solutions. Brugnatelli, in 1805, found that two silver medals became gilded in a solution of gold by passing the electricity through them. Mr. Henry Bessemer, in 1834, coated various lead ornaments with copper by using a solution of copper in a similar manner. And in 1836 Mr. De la Rue found that copies might be taken in copper of engraved copper-plates by the electro-depositing process. Faraday discovered magneto-electricity in the year 1831, by rotating a disc of copper between the poles of a magnet, and he has stated that the first successful result he obtained was so small that he could hardly detect it. This simple experiment was the origin of the magneto-electric machine, and many of these machines are now used for producing the electric light, and for depositing nickel, copper, silver, and gold, instead of by the voltaic battery. These, and other engines, thermic, magnetic, electric, &c, will probably, ere long, be constructed on as large a scale, and as many in number, as the present steam engine.

The discovery in olden times of the attractive properties of a fragment of iron ore, was the basis of the invention of the mariner's compass, which greatly improved navigation, and led to nearly all the chief maritime discoveries which have since been made. The sciences of magnetism and geometry form the basis of the art of navigation, and have thus made our great foreign commerce possible. The discovery of magnetism enabled sailing vessels to venture freely out of sight of land, and to traverse the wide ocean with even greater safety than to sail near the shore. By its means Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean and discovered America. By its means also, Vasco de Gama sailed round the Cape of Good Hope and discovered a new route to India; and in the year 1500, another Portuguese Captain, Cabral, was driven across the Atlantic, discovered Brazil, and was enabled by the aid of the magnet, to send back a ship to Lisbon with news of the discovery. By its assistance also Magellan discovered Patagonia and the South Pacific Ocean; and by the completion of that voyage the Earth was first circumnavigated and proved to be a globe.

The geographical discoveries of the Portuguese, made by means of the magnet, produced great national results; they profoundly changed the balance of power and wealth among European nations, by changing the direction of navigation and of the great streams of commerce between Europe and the East. They gave a mortal blow to Italy and the cities of the Mediterranean, by transferring Eastern commerce to Spain and Portugal: and Egypt ceased to be the greatest route of commerce from Europe to India.

A singular contract relating to geographical research was made in the fifteenth century, between King Alphonso, of Portugal, and Ferdinand Gomez, of Lisbon, by which the latter engaged to navigate a ship and explore the coast of Africa, and to discover not less than three hundred miles of coast every year, the measurement to be made from Sierra Leone.

Scientific discovery has in all ages been a most powerful agent of civilization and human progress. The discovery of the black liquid which a solution of nutgalls produces when mixed with green vitriol, led to the invention of writing ink; and a knowledge of the properties of ink and paper prepared the way for the invention of printing, by means of which truth and learning have spread all over the earth.

The apparently insignificant property possessed by amber, of attracting feathers immediately after it has been rubbed, was known twenty-four hundred years ago, and afterwards led to the discovery of electricity. In later times, Dr. Franklin, by means of a kite, charged a bottle with lightning, examined it, and proved lightning and electricity to be identical. This knowledge, joined to the further discovery, that electricity would pass freely through metals, led to the modern invention of the lightning conductor, by means of which all our great buildings, ships, lighthouses, arsenals, and powder magazines are protected from lightning.

"Coming events cast their shadows before them: " the discovery of the instant transmission of electricity along wires by Stephen Gray and Wheeler, about the year 1729, fore-shadowed the invention of the electric telegraph. About the year 1819, Oersted, a Danish philosopher, after fifteen years of study and experiment, to ascertain the relation of electricity to magnetism, discovered that if a freely suspended magnetic needle was supported parallel and near to a wire, and an electric current then passed through the wire, the needle moved and placed itself at right angles to the current. This discovery, coupled with the previous one of the electric conductivity of metals, formed the indispensable basis of all our electric telegraphs.