By Rev. Baden Powell
[Greek letters are represented by "XXX"
Latin words remain as scanned, no spell-checking]
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE AS BEARING ON RELIGIOUS BELIEF.
I. THE PHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE ANCIENTS AND OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
Early progress of scientific ideas.
THE first origin and early progress of all science is involved in obscurity; yet, on
general grounds, it may be considered evident that the necessary arts of life must, from
the nature of the case, precede all scientific speculation or inquiry; and, again, when
such speculation does begin, it seems an equally natural result that, in the infancy of
intellectual progress, imagination should largely predominate, and that science should not
at first take the strictest or simplest form of inquiry into facts, but rather begin with
widely extended yet visionary contemplation, out of which more sober and exact conclusions
are only by degrees evolved. Men must live and act
before they speculate; and when they speculate they feel and fancy before they
investigate and measure--they wonder and imagine before they reason and analyze.
Mystical origin of
Science.
If we look at the case historically, in its first stage,
as far back as we can trace it, early science is always
found involved in a large admixture of mysticism, closely combined with religious or superstitious impressions
on the one band, and with not less visionary
philosophic theories on the other.
The rudest observations of great natural phenomena were associated with those feelings of awe and
wonder, which easily accorded with a belief in supernatural influences; and some of the earliest indications of this spirit were seen in the ideas of astrology,
and of omens and portents supposed to be connected
with human affairs; while the phenomena themselves, not reduced to laws, were ascribed to arbitrary and
often conflicting supernatural agencies.
But the feelings of awe and wonder first inspired
by the contemplation of nature, especially in its
grander aspects and phenomena, gave way by degrees to more familiar inquiry; and thus out of
mysticism we trace the first rise of philosophy, as
described by Aristotle [Aristot. "Metaph." i. 12.]:
X X X X X
X
With the varied phenomena of nature constantly before their eyes, it was impossible
that men should not gradually, and by the continued use of their senses, exercised on
objects around them, arrive at some conceptions of physical truth, however imperfect. Such
knowledge, slowly accumulated, by degrees assumed some definite shape, and ideas properly
belonging to science were, in some measure, extricated from the mass of extraneous, if not
prejudicial, adjuncts in which they were involved; and thus, in some isolated departments,
in early times, a few physical facts, and even simple laws and general truths, were
recognized amid
the multitude of speculations and imaginary theories in which man's untaught fancy
luxuriated.
No distinction between fact and theory.
But such ideas, at the best, were unconnected among themselves, and were mixed up with
an incongruous mass of mystical conceits, and hardly intelligible abstractions. There was
scarcely any definite line
of demarcation drawn between fanciful hypothesis and Physical reality, between fiction and fact. Now and then a high physical principle
or a just and sound analogy was thrown out, as it were by accident, or at least without
any apparent sequence or connection with other truths, and amidst a mass of absurdity and
error.
Instances
Thus, for example, Pythagoras had asserted not only the heliocentric planetary
system, but even that comets resemble planets of longer period. But, instead of advancing
in later ages, these sound and just analogies were overpowered by the increasing
subtleties of the mere technical schools, --when Aristotle taught that comets were mere
terrestrial meteors, and refused them a place among the objects of astronomy; when others
held that the earth was a flat cylinder, and the sun the size of the Peloponnesus, and
when the solar system gave way before the complex geocentric scheme of the Peripatetics,
and a multitude of antagonistic powers, sympathies, and antipathies, were
assigned as the causes of physical phenomena.
Anaxagoras taught just notions of the celestial dynamics when he affirmed
that the heavenly bodies would fall if not prevented by their rapid motion,
"like a stone whirled round with a string ;" - Democritus argued the infinity of
the sidereal universe, or it would collapse into a point;--Aristarchus of Samos described
the sun, with his attendant planets, as a star among innumerable stars; yet these sublime
and just views were soon lost sight of in the crystalline spheres and firmaments of the
Ptolemaists, and the distinctions between terrestrial and celestial motions of the
Peripatetics.
Fragmentary knowledge.
Such was the absence of sequence and connection
which characterizes the history of the ancient speculations, and which, in
truth, results almost inevitably
from the nature of the principles on which they were
conducted.
The physical science of the ancients was chiefly a
multitude of discordant gratuitous theories, amid which we discern, here and there,
some disconnected individual investigations of immense power and beauty; such as
their geometry, their geometrical optics, their principles of the mechanical
powers, and a few elementary applications of them.
No real advance with time.
But when we look beyond these, we perceive that in such a philosophy there
was no continuous progress, no settled order according to which one truth was elicited out of another, no advance from the mere particular to the more general. The
earlier views were often better, more sound and comprehensive, than the later. They were,
in fact, all more or less conjectural, and, as such, were not dependent upon any steady
advance in discovery, or the cooperation of many minds and many hands, but arose entirely
out of the spontaneous conceptions of individual, intellects, and were thus good or
faulty, not with reference to any advance in the age, but only in proportion to the
intrinsic ability and power of those individual minds.
Preference
of moral
to physical
speculation.
The Greek philosophers, in an early age, had
asserted the dignity of physical inquiry; an ancient
astronomer had declared that man was born to study the heavens. But later philosophers were bewildered amid the multiplicity of systems, and thence regarded
all inquiry into the world of matter as vain and unworthy, and turned to speculations in the world of
mind or spirit as a more congenial and satisfactory field.
And the same idea has been re-echoed in modern times; men have turned from the path of
physical and demonstrative certainty to the dubious regions
of moral disputation, and have even denounced the inquiry into nature as presumptuous
and irreligious; while they have confidently rushed into metaphysical speculation on
topics beyond all human comprehension. Pliny [Nat. Hist. ii 26.]
thought Hipparchus impious in making a
catalogue of the stars; and an equally preposterous prejudice actuates vulgar minds even
in our own days. At a much earlier period, the same spirit of jealousy and hostility
against physical investigation was displayed when Anaxagoras was persecuted for showing
that an eclipse was nothing but the stoppage of light by the opaque body of the moon or
earth, instead of a supernatural miracle, as was then the orthodox creed.
Ancient Cosmogonies.
In the earliest stage to which we can trace the ideas of ancient nations, we always
find conspicuous a mythological cosmogony. That of the Hindoos is of a most elaborate and
abstruse kind, involving the notion of many successive creations and destructions of the
world, and in its details offering many striking analogies to systems which have been
upheld even in later ages. The Egyptians held a like series of cataclysms and renovations. Among the Chinese and
Peruvians, the equally marvelous fables of deluges
and universal catastrophes seem to refer to later periods, and do not assume so transcendent and
sublime a character as those of the Indian cosmogonies.
Plastic
powers of
nature.
Apart, however, from these visionary fancies and fabulous conceptions of creation, there are on record,
even in early times, discoveries of fossil bones, shells,
and other remains, which were either ascribed to
fancied monsters, or else to the plastic powers of
nature indulging in wanton frolics, and mocking
human research by forged imitations of real objects.
Among the Greeks, though some mythological
ideas of a similar kind were prevalent, yet instances
are not wanting of more philosophical views, suggested by actual observation of
phenomena--as far
as they went--conformable to what modern research
has confirmed. Such are some of the speculations
upheld by Strabo and others as to the effects of
earthquakes, volcanic action, and the like, in the
upheaval of strata and other terrestrial changes.
Value of generalization.
It is only in an advanced state of cultivation that men have been led to acknowledge the preeminent
value and higher character of all science to be in proportion to the degree of generalization
to which it has attained; in accordance with the extent of that generalization
do we perceive the vast combination of natural laws, all mutually dependent
on each other, conspiring towards greater and higher principles; and begin to obtain
glimpses of that unity
pervading nature which is the true basis of the grand idea of "Cosmos" the principle
of universal and perpetual law, order, harmony, and reason throughout the material
universe. Ideas of this tendency were occasionally broached by the ancients amid their
manifold speculations--philosophical dreams, which yet, like other dreams, sometimes
chanced to prove true.
Some ideas of inductive generalization.
Among the ancients, as the physical sciences had hardly advanced, at least to any
higher generalizations, as there were even counteracting causes impeding any possibility of its
attaining them, so we could not legitimately expect any indications of those higher
conclusions just alluded to. Yet, though such conclusions could not strictly follow from
existing physical data, we find a similar kind of instinctive anticipation to that noticed
in some other instances;
larger ideas occasionally thrown out, and reflections on them sometimes followed up by
the ancient philosophers, though altogether hypothetical--happy theoretical conjectures
suggested by the spirit of speculation in which they were so fond of indulging. We may
perhaps exemplify this in the remarkable declaration of Cicero, so accordant with the real
progress of inductive discovery, advancing from artificial systems towards natural
principles: "0pinionum commenta delet dies, naturae judicia confirmat;" as well as the very just distinction drawn by Seneca as to the real object of
physical inquiry, the search after natural causes as real and permanent, not arbitrary or
fortuitous: "Naturalem causam quaerimus et assiduam, non raram et fortuitam."
It may, perhaps, be taken as something like a recognition of an unity in natural causes
that several of the ancient schools in their speculative theories resolved all things into
one primary element --the Ionic school into water, Anaximenes into air, Heraclitus into
fire. But with these speculations there seems to have been usually mixed up some vague
notion that these elements were pervaded by a kind of vital or creative energy; Thales is said to have held that out of water a supreme
mind evolved all things. But in general there appears no disposition on the part of the
ancient writers to ascribe creation to their gods.
Hesiod [Op. et Dies, i. 108] supposes gods as well as men,
to have sprung from unknown powers of nature, and Diodorus Siculus [lib. i.]
enumerates the various opinions held as to the origin of the world, in which there is little or no reference
to the idea of a creative Deity; but he owns the subject to be one beyond human
intelligence.
Idea of Cosmos
The
Order of Nature
