Science

SCIENCE, a word which, in its broadest sense, is synonymous with learning and knowledge. (Lat scientia, from scire, to learn, know.) Accordingly it can be used in connection with any quali fying adjective, which shows what branch of learning is meant. But in general usage a more restricted meaning has been adopted, which differentiates "science" from other branches of accurate knowledge. For our purpose, science may be defined as ordered knowledge of natural phenomena and of the relations between them; thus it is a short term for "natural science," and as such is used here in conformity with a general modern convention.

The Origin of Science.

The beginnings of physical science are to be sought in the slow and unconscious observation by primitive races of men of natural occurrences, such as the appar ent movements of the heavenly bodies, and in the gradually ac quired mastery over the rude implements by the aid of which such men strove to increase the security and comfort of their lives. Biological science similarly must have begun with observa tion of the plants and animals useful to man, and with empirical medicine and surgery. Again, it is probable that magic, by which man tries to obtain direct control over nature, helped to lead both to primitive religion and also, directly or indirectly, to prac tical science. But it was only when considerable progress had been made with ordered knowledge that men began to seek natural causes for phenomena, and to discern the connections between them.

In the earliest stage of development it seems that an anthropo morphic or mythological explanation is always assigned to the phenomena of nature. With no clue to trace the regularity of sequence and connection between those phenomena, an untutored mind inevitably refers the apparently capricious events which succeed each other to the direct and immediate intervention of some unseen being of a nature essentially similar to his own. The sun is the flaming chariot of the sun-god, driven day by day across the heavens; the clouds are cows from which milk de scends as nourishing rain on the fruitful earth. We may regard such myths as childlike fancies, but they were doubtless an ad vance on the lack of explanation which preceded them ; they supplied hypotheses which, besides providing suggestive themes of beauty for poetry and art, played the first and chief part of a scientific hypothesis in pointing the way for further inquiry. Much useful knowledge was acquired and much skill gained in logical analysis before these primitive explanations were proved insuf ficient. A false theory which can be compared with facts may be more useful at a given stage of development than a true one which is beyond the comprehension of the time, and is incapable of examination by any known means of observation or experiment.

The phenomena of the heavens are at once the most striking, the most easily observed and the most regular of those which are impressed inevitably on the minds of thinking men. Thus it is to astronomy we must look for the first development of scientific ideas.

Early Astronomy.

The orientation of many prehistoric monuments shows that a certain amount of astronomical observa tion had been acquired at a very early age, and the Chaldeans seem to have gone so far as to recognize a law of periodicity even in eclipses. The earliest known systematic advance on the mythological view of nature is to be found in the writings of the Ionian philosophers of whom Thales of Miletus (58o B.c.) is regarded as the first. Anaximander recognized the rotation of the heavens round the pole star, and saw that the dome overhead was but the half of a complete sphere. The earth was thus deprived of the base stretching to unfathomed depths imagined by the mythologists, and was left free to float as a flattened cylinder at the centre of the celestial sphere.

Next came the Pythagoreans, who simplified these conceptions by the suggestion that instead of a rotation of the vast sphere of the heavens the earth itself might be a sphere and revolve about a central fixed point, like a stone at the end of a string. The uninhabited side of the earth always faced the fixed point, and its inhabited side faced successively the different parts of the heavens. At the central fixed point they placed a "universal fire," which, like the fire on an altar, served as a centre for the circling of the worshipping earth. Mythology was losing its hold of science, but mystical symbolism still held sway. When, however, in the 4th century B.C., the growth of geographical discovery failed to dis close any trace of this central fire, the idea of its existence faded away, and was replaced by the conception of the revolution of the earth on its own axis. At a later date, Aristarchus (28o B.c.), believing that the sun was larger than the earth, thought it unlikely that it should revolve round the earth, and developed a helio centric theory. But the time was not ripe ; no indisputable evi dence could be adduced, no general conviction followed, and to mankind the earth remained the centre of creation for many centuries. Even to Lucretius, the visible universe consisted of the central earth with its attendant water, air and aether surrounded by the sphere of the heavens, which formed the flaming walls of the world—flammantia moenia mundi.