RENOVATUM. BY WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D., MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND BEING THE SECOND PART OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE INDUCTIVE SCIENCES. THE THIRD EDITION, WITH LARGE ADDITIONS. ΛΑΜΠΑΔΙΑ ΕΧΟΝΤΕΣ ΔΙΑΔΩΣΟΥΣΙΝ ΑΛΛΗΛΟΙΣ. LONDON: JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. 1858. Physics Library 175 ・WE. Ir is to our immortal countryman, Bacon, that we owe the broad announcement of this grand and fertile principle; and the developement of the idea, that the whole of natural philosophy consists entirely of a series of inductive generalizations, commencing with the most circumstantially stated particulars, and carried up to universal laws, or axioms, which comprehend in their statements every subordinate degree of generality; and of a corresponding series of inverted reasoning from generals to particulars, by which these axioms are traced back into their remotest consequences, and all particular propositions deduced from them; as well those by whose immediate considerations we rose to their discovery, as those of which we had no previous knowledge. HERSCHEL, Discourse on Natural Philosophy, Art. 96. CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. qt-wenley 5-15-39 PREFACE. EVEN if Bacon's Novum Organon had possessed the character to which it aspired as completely as was possible in its own day, it would at present need renovation and even if no such book had ever been written, it would be a worthy undertaking to determine the machinery, intellectual, social and material, by which human knowledge can best be augmented. Bacon could only divine how sciences might be constructed; we can trace, in their history, how their construction has taken place. However sagacious were his conjectures, the facts which have really occurred must give additional instruction: however large were his anticipations, the actual progress of science since his time has illustrated them in all their extent. And as to the structure and operation of the Organ by which truth is to be collected from nature,—that is, the Methods by which science is to be promoted-we know that, though Bacon's general maxims are sagacious and animating, his particular precepts failed in his hands, and are now practically useless. This, perhaps, was not wonderful, seeing that they were, as I have said, mainly derived from conjectures respecting knowledge and the progress of knowledge; but at the present day, when, in several provinces of knowledge, we have a large actual progress of solid truth to look back upon, we may make the like attempt with the prospect of better success, at least on that ground. It may be a task, not hopeless, to extract from the past progress of science the elements of an effectual and substantial method of Scientific Discovery. The advances which have, during the last three centuries, been made in the physical sciences;-in Astronomy, in Physics, in Chemistry, in Natural History, in Physiology;-these are allowed by all to be real, to be great, to be striking; may it not be that the steps of progress in these different cases have in them something alike? May it not be that in each advancing movement of such knowledge there is some common principle, some common process? May it not be that discoveries are made by an Organ which has something uniform in its working? If we can shew that this is so, we shall have the New Organ, which Bacon aspired to construct, renovated according to our advanced intellectual position and office. It was with the view of opening the way to such an attempt that I undertook that survey of the past progress of physical knowledge, of which I have given the results in the History of the Sciences, and the History of Scientific Ideas'; the former containing the history of the sciences, so far as it depends on 1 Published in two former editions as part of the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (b. i.-x.). observed Facts; the latter containing the history of those Ideas by which such Facts are bound into Theories. It can hardly happen that a work which treats of Methods of Scientific Discovery, shall not seem to fail in the positive results which it offers. For an Art of Discovery is not possible. At each step of the investigation are needed Invention, Sagacity, Genius, -elements which no art can give. We may hope in vain, as Bacon hoped, for an Organ which shall enable all men to construct Scientific Truths, as a pair of compasses enables all men to construct exact circles. This cannot be. The practical results of the Philosophy of Science must be rather classification and analysis of what has been done, than precept and method for future doing. Yet I think that the methods of discovery which I have to recommend, though gathered from a wider survey of scientific history, both as to subjects and as to time, than (so far as I am aware) has been elsewhere attempted, are quite as definite and practical as any others which have been proposed; with the great additional advantage of being the methods by which all great discoveries in science have really been made. This may be said, for instance, of the Method of Gradation and the Method of Natural Classification, spoken of b. iii. c. viii; and in a narrower sense, of the Method of Curves, the Method of 2 Nov. Org. lib. i. aph. 61. |