Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science / delivered by the President, William Robert Grove ... in the Theatre, Nottingham, August 22, 1866.

  • Grove, W. R. (William Robert), 1811-1896.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science / delivered by the President, William Robert Grove ... in the Theatre, Nottingham, August 22, 1866. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    OF WILLIAM ROBERT GROVE, Esq., Q.C., M.A., E.R.S., PRESIDENT. If our rude predecessors, who at one time inhabited the caverns wliich surround this town, could rise from their graves and see it in its present state, it may be doubtful whether they would have sufficient knowledge to be surprised. The machinery, almost resembling organic beings in delicacy of structure, by which you fabricate products of world-wide reputation, the powers of matter apphed to give motion to that machinery, are so far removed from what must have been the conceptions of the semibarbarians to whom I have alluded, that they could not look on them with intelligent wonder. Yet this immense progress has all been effected step by step, now and then a little more sudden than at other times; but, viewing the whole course of improvement, it has been gradual, though moving in an accelerated ratio. Rut it is not merely in those branches of natural knowledge which tend to improvements in economical arts and manufactures, that science has made great progress. In the study of our own planet and the organic beings with which it is crowded, and in so much of the universe, as vision, aided by the telescope, has brought within the scope of observation, the present century has surpassed any antecedent period of equal duration. It would be difficult to trace out all the causes which have led to the in¬ crease of observational and experimental knowledge. Among the more thinking portion of mankind the gratification felt by the discovery of new truths, the expansion of faculties, and extension of the boundaries of knowledge have been doubtless a sufficient inducement to the study of nature; while, to the more practical minds, the reality, the cer¬ tainty, and the progressive character of the acquisitions of natural science, and the enormously increa.sed means which its applications give, have im- 18GG. B