The art of scientific discovery, or, The general conditions and methods of research in physics and chemistry / by G. Gore.

  • Gore, George, 1826-1909.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The art of scientific discovery, or, The general conditions and methods of research in physics and chemistry / by G. Gore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    matter merely of time and labour only, nor to pretend that important discoveries can be completely made by rule alone. My purpose is only to show that an art of scien- tific discovery is much more possible now than it was in the time of Lord Bacon, and is fast becoming more so, and that the process of scientific discovery can even now be much more completely reduced to order and rule than is usually supposed. The process of scientific discovery depends on a com- bination of experiment and logical inference; and the small success of previous writers respecting it has, in my opinion, been due to the circumstance, that those who possessed both the experimental and the logical know- ledge necessary, made no sufficiently persistent attempt to determine how far the work of scientific discovery may be reduced to an art. t To some the very proposal to write a book on such a subject may appear presumptuous ; and even among scientific investigators there are those who consider that the methods of discovery are incommunicable. But ori- ginal scientific research is not a supernatural operation. If it were, it would not be possible to make discoveries by means of our natural faculties, nor to communicate them by ordinary means. It is a natural process, and, being such, it must have laws according to which it operates. It is effected by means of our mental powers, and is there- fore subject to the rules of mental action, and is commu- nicable by ordinary natural methods. It is also being reduced, as knowledge advances, to rules of action, and will in time become one of the noblest of all intellectual em-