Professional atmosphere and morals, or, Patents and secrets vs. liberal profession.

  • Meriam, Horatio C., 1849-1911.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Professional atmosphere and morals, or, Patents and secrets vs. liberal profession. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    their work to dig for him a specimen, all helped. There was the personality of the man, to be sure, added to science; but the sci- entific test for a scientist was the same before and is the same to-day. Fidelity to their obligations as teachers. The article by the Duke of Argyle called The Great Lesson is of interest as illustrating this, and the atmosphere and morals of science, the integrity of its teachers, and the obligations to truth which they acknowledge. The voyage of the Beagle ended in 1836, during which Mr. Darwin made his observations, and framed his theories of the for- mation of the coral reefs and islands. More than thirty-five years after, the Challenger expedition, with Mr. John Murray as nat- uralist, was sent out. He made observations and drew conclusions that called for a new explanation. (I quote from the duke's paper.) This was communicated to the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh in 1880> and supported by such a weight of facts and such a close texture of reasoning that no serious reply has ever been attempted. At the same time the reluctance to admit such an error in the greal idol of the scientific world, the necessity of suddenly disbelieving all that had been believed and repeated in every form for upwards of forty years, of canceling what had been taught the young for more than a whole generation, had led to a slow and sulky acquiescence rather than to that joy which every true votary of science ought to feel in the discovery of a new truth, and not less in the exposure of a long-accepted error. The charges so distinctly made by the Duke of Argyle soon re- ceived a warm repl}^. It was held he had charged the leading scien- tists of England with a conspiracy of silence; that they were so anxious to guard the memory of Darwin and to preserve his theory that they had refused to investigate truth; in other words, had formed a Trust, or what we now know as a Combination, to exclude all competing discoverers and prevent by silence free dis- cussion of scientific questions, and discourage investigators, and by so doing they were guilty of conspiracy. Professors Huxley and Bonney replied warmly, the former not only to the duke but to a preacher whom he calls Anonymous, and said, For, not content with misrepresenting science on its speculative side, ' Anonymous' attacks its morality; thus: ' For two whole years investigations and conclusions which would upset the theories of Darwin on the forma- tion of coral islands were actually suppressed, and that by the advice of those who accepted them, for fear of upsetting the faith and dis- turbing the judgment formed by the multitude on the scientific character, the infallibility of the great master. . . .' Prof Huxley denies the truth of this, and says, The charge thus