Handbook of the British Association for the Advancement of Science / by Mrs William Fison.

  • Fison, William, Mrs.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of the British Association for the Advancement of Science / by Mrs William Fison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/238 (page 4)
    knowledge, the search after truth, can scarcely be recognised in its sublimity, by those who do not understand the errors which had to be swept away, before it could advance in an uninterrupted path.”* Even beneath the shadow of scholasticism, in the cloistered cell, were the foundations being laid of modern Science, by the observations and experiments of the simple-minded men, who pursued their investigations amid difficulties, of which we, who live in a happier age, can form no conception. It is certain that many facts relating to experimental philosophy were current during the Middle Ages. This we learn from the writings of Roger Bacon and others, but some power was wanting to give the existing elements of scientific progress life and unity. Knowledge could not ripen into general principles (however extensive that of the isolated observer might be) while requiring aids and appliances, which the soli- tary individual could not obtain. Discoveries of the highest value to human progress “ even became corrupt in the dull stagnation of the mystery in which they were buried, and were used only as means of influence over the ignorant, as instruments of superstition or imposture, sources of delusion to their possessors themselves. Astronomy became astrology,— chemistry, alchemy,—natural philosophy, magic. Brewster has shown how the concave mirror brought up an apparition when it was needed, and Boutigny has revealed how the repulsive energies of heat ministered to the iniquity of the ordeal, t Confined as the science of the time was to the narrow limits of the school philosophy, its progress was still further opposed by the intolerant spirit of the age, which could persecute a Copernicus and a Galileo.]; * Dr. Lyon Playfair. + Dr. Robinson. + Centuries before tlie appearance of Lord Bacon, lived an obscure Monk named Roger Bacon, that “early star predicting dawn,” who,