Read Ebook: How to Use the Popular Science Library; History of Science; General Index by Selwyn Brown Arthur Serviss Garrett Putman

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If it is the springtime, you may be interested by the sight of a tall, graceful tree, as lofty as a pine, and as straight in trunk, with many exquisite blossoms hanging from the pendulous stems on its great limbs, fifty or more feet above the ground, as if it were a flower garden in the air for the special delectation of the birds. Having never heard of a flowering tree outside the tropics, you feel a keen desire to know what this one is, and thus a way of introduction, founded on keen, personal interest, is opened for you to the science of botany. And few persons can take a ride, or a walk, anywhere in city or country or park, without having attention attracted by some unknown flower or plant, or tree, and without becoming aware how much pleasure is lost, and how much useful knowledge missed, by lack of the easily acquired knowledge of these things, which anybody can have by giving to it only that amount of time which would otherwise be wasted almost as completely as if the eyes were kept closed and the mind dismissed from its home in the brain. More mysterious, and not less fascinating than flowers and trees, are the birds and insects that flit by on their own errands. To explain them you have the volume on zo?logy, the science of animal life. Botany and zo?logy together go far to revolutionize the ordinary man's ideas about the attractiveness of outdoor life.

For the cultivator of the soil, whether farmer, gardener, or fruit grower, botany, of course, is the queen of sciences--though he may not safely remain ignorant of the others mentioned, which form a brilliant court for his queen. In no direction has science lately proved itself so indispensable as in the application of botanical knowledge to the improvement of agricultural operations of all kinds. In France, always one of the richest of lands in this respect, the government has since the war made special provisions for placing instruction in botany and plant physiology, and the results of all advances in the science of the vegetable kingdom, before the pupils of the primary as well as those of the secondary and higher schools. Botanical reading and study are encouraged in every possible way. One of the most significant propositions for the extension of this educational reform consists in the suggestion that the schools in the country districts give much more attention to the various branches of botanical knowledge than the city schools do, for the purpose not only of supplying instruction that will be of fundamental practical use to the young people who grow up on the land and are to make its cultivation their life's occupation, but also of stimulating a love of the country for itself, its scenes, its atmosphere, its society, its amusements, and its simple, beautiful, and healthful ways of life.

As your train, or car, rushes through a rock cut where the roadway has been carried, without change of level or grade, through the round back of a hill, you may happen to see on the side walls of the excavation curious striations, or cross checkings, of the rock surface, or alternate strata, or layers, of varying color and texture; some composed of smooth-faced stone, of a dark, uniform color, and others of coarse granular masses of variegated hue, some of whose particles flash like microscopic mirrors in the glancing sunlight that grazes the top of the cut. Here, then, you are plunged into the wonder world of the geologist and the mineralogist, the subject of one of the most interesting of our volumes. That man must indeed be dull of intellect who does not feel a thrill of interest at the sight of these signs and inscriptions, written by the ancient hand of nature in the rocks, and telling, in language far more easily decipherable than the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the story of the gradual growth of this round planet on whose surface we are confined, like flies or ants, as it rotates and revolves in empty space, circling with us around a star, ninety-three million miles away, called the sun, which saw the birth of our world and has ever since kept it warmed and lighted with its rays.

In those layers of rock in the railway cut you see the leaves of the book of geology, infinitely older than the oldest scripture from man's hands, and relating things that occurred in those far-off nights and mornings of time that flitted over the globe ages before the human stem had set off from the trunk of terrestrial life. These geologic pages speak of occurrences in the building of the world that happened millions of years ago, and millions of years apart, though they have left marks and vestiges that the eye can discern as easily as if they had been the work of yesterday. No observant person can ride twenty miles through the country, especially in a hilly region, without having the fundamental facts of geology continually before him, and all that he needs in order to comprehend these things is a little preparatory reading, accompanied and followed by intelligent thought and observation. Anybody to whom all rocks look alike, and all hills the same, needs a little awakening of the mind. He is one of the persons had in view when this series was conceived and written, and he has no occasion to feel in the slightest degree offended by such a statement, for the simple fact that probably ninety-nine one-hundredths of his fellow citizens, and they among the best in the community, are just as unfamiliar with the plainest facts of geology as he is. Geology is not a difficult science to master in its main outlines, and there are few more fascinating when once its drift is caught. Even the beginner in the reading of the volume on geology, by seizing such chances of observation as every ride or walk affords, may in a very short time acquire the ability to read the history of a landscape from its face, to recognize the work of the glaciers in the great Age of Ice, to see where ancient streams flowed, or where molten rock has gushed up through the surface layers of the earth's crust, and even to recognize on sight some of the fossils, which are under everybody's feet in some parts of the country, and which still retain the forms of animals some of which were among the primal inhabitants of the earth, whose lines have died out, while others, though their individual lives expired tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, bear in their fossilized forms a close resemblance to modern relatives and descendants whose generations still flourish in the living world in this twentieth century of man's latest historic era.

Presently, turning from the attractions of the outdoor world, which seem just as entrancing the hundredth time you look upon them as they did the first time, particularly if you have cultivated the habit not merely of noticing but of thinking and reading about them, you take up the morning newspaper, in which most of your companions of the car are already deeply buried, and amid the political news, the personal gossip, the inevitable exploitation of the deeds of criminals, the foreign intelligence, and the social gossip that falls under your eyes, your attention is caught by the headline: "John Daniel, the orang-utan, is dead." This sounds odd. There has been no animal's obituary in the papers since Barnum lost his biggest elephant, and bequeathed its skeleton to science. You read further and find an interview with a professor about the human relationships, or apparent relationships, of the anthropoid apes, of whom "John Daniel" would probably have been the acknowledged king if his relatives of the woods could have understood the regard in which he was held by his white-skinned and clothes-wearing jailers. You will probably cut out that paragraph and put it aside for further consideration, remembering that there are at least three volumes in your Popular Science set at home, that on zo?logy, that on geology, and that on anthropology, in which there will be an abundance of interesting and authoritative matter bearing on this most important subject--for important you will consider it now that the death of a kind of caricature of humanity in the zo?logical garden that had so long amused the children as well as their elders with its humanlike motions, habits, looks, and pranks, has suddenly brought the whole question up among the news of the day, affording you a new light on a matter which you had hitherto thought to belong exclusively to the field of the professors of zo?logy and their students. Hereafter you will disposed to take a broader view of all these things, and will be in a better position to understand and enjoy the discussions of learned scientists when they are interviewed by newspaper men on subjects of this kind. The inquiring spirit of the time requires this concession even if in your private opinion there is no real relationship between men and apes. And, without regard to any such questions, you will find the volume on anthropology immensely interesting and informing.

Finally, as your morning's trip comes to an end, your attention is recalled from the natural to the mechanical sciences. You descend from your car or train, to go to your office. Your now fully awakened mind, alert to all the scientific relations of everything about you, can no longer keep from dwelling upon the underlying meanings of this marvelous display of realized human dreams. With the speed of the wind you are carried deep under the city's pavements, inclosed in a little flying parlor, in the midst of an artificial subterranean daylight, far beyond the reach of the solar rays, emulating the self-luminous creatures of the deep sea bottom; or you go shooting past the window of third, fourth, and fifth stories, or even above the levels of roofs, and you cannot but reflect and marvel that electricity does it all; electricity, that strange imp with blue star eyes no bigger than pin points, and a child's crown of little crinkling, piercing rays, which seemed so amusing when you were at school in the old days of frictional electric machines, when it was a great joke to give the cat a shock and see her flee with a squall, her hair standing on end in spite of herself. But now electricity has become a giant of unrivaled and terrific power, spurning the heavy-limbed Brobdingnag, steam, from its swift path, and fast making the world all its own--except its master, man, who is still, however, half afraid of his new and all-capable servant.

This modern genie of limitless power, conjured out of his deceptive bottle, can do the smallest as well as the greatest things for you. When, upon reaching your office, you telephone to your wife that Mr. Blank will be home to dinner with you, you cannot form the slightest idea of how the miracle of distant speech is accomplished unless you are either an electrician yourself, or have read intelligently upon the subject of the applications of electricity to the motivation of all kinds of machinery, a subject to which an entire volume is devoted in our series. It would be a kind of shame and reproach to an intelligent man to be ignorant of the way his telephone works, and of the simple scientific principle on which it is constructed. If telephones, and such things, were products of nature and grew on trees, we might be excusable for not knowing exactly their secret; but being made by men, with the same limitations as those that circumscribe us all, we ought at least to understand them.

Thus, by a simple review of the series of common happenings that arrive every day to everybody, we perceive how intimately and indissolubly the various branches of science treated of in this compact library of science, are linked with all that we do, including our most unconscious acts and our most habitual subjects of thought. We have taken for illustration the morning history of a person supposed to live amid urban or suburban surroundings. Equally illuminating would be that of an inhabitant of a village or a rural district, and even more suggestive in many respects. The dweller in the country is brought into closer association with the infinitely changing aspects of nature than the city dweller enjoys. The simplest incident in the life of a person living on a farm may be the beginning of a thread of connection leading, like the clue of a labyrinth, into the heart of some of the most marvelous departments of science, and resulting in a mental revolution for the fortunate person who follows out the clue under such guidance as these volumes afford. The writer has remembered from boyhood the indelible impression made upon his mind by the finding of an Indian arrowhead in a recently ploughed field. The shapeliness of the beautifully chipped piece of flint, almost as translucent at the edges as horn, the delicate tapering point which, as if by miracle, had remained unbroken probably since colonial times, the two curious little "ears" carefully formed on each side of the flat triangular base to facilitate attachment to the head of the arrow, and the thought, suggested by older persons, that this weapon might actually have been used in some midnight attack on a white settlement, made more terrifying by the frightful Mohawk war whoop and the display of the reeking scalps of human victims in the glare of burning stockade and cabins--all these things bred a keen desire to learn the particulars of the history of the red warriors of the Five Nations, the "Romans of the New World," and also to know something about the life and customs of this strange, savage race of mankind which continued to live in an "age of stone" on a continent that had never known civilization. No volume like that on the history and development of man in this series existed at that time; but if such a book had existed and had fallen into the hands of the finder of the arrowhead, it would surely have fascinated him more than "Robinson Crusoe" did, because a boy can distinguish as readily as a grown person the superior interest of the true over the pretended, provided that the true possesses the real elements of romance.

So, too, the writer remembers having an interest in mineralogy awakened in his mind, never to be obliterated, by the sight of another plowed field, in the southern skirts of the Adirondack Mountains, whose freshly turned furrows glittered in the sunshine with thickly scattered quartz crystals, some of the larger and more perfect of which blazed across, the whole breadth of the field, like huge diamonds, and made the heart of the finder beat with an excitement akin to that of the discoverer of a Koh-i-noor. There were also some very curious "stone buttons" which one could break out with a hammer from slate rocks along the Schoharie Creek, and which, when cracked open, were found to be composed of pyrites that resembled pure silver--and sometimes gold--freshly broken. Now, things of this sort are always attracting the attention and awakening the curiosity of children living in the country, but the real pleasure and instruction that they might afford are usually missed because of the lack in the family library of popularly written books on the natural sciences--a lack that we are trying to supply.

For city children and their elders, whose eyes are constantly greeted, not by hills, creeks, ponds, rivers, woods, and fields, but by sky-aspiring buildings, railroads elevated on stilts, multiple-decked suspension bridges, electric power houses, tunnels that form a second city underground, and the thousand marvels and splendors of electric illumination at night, the volumes on physics, mechanics, and electricity and magnetism have a more immediate interest and value. What the children learn about these things in school is far from sufficient to satisfy their curiosity. They need books at home to guide their inquiries as well as to answer them. Only by that means can the diffusion of scientific knowledge, and the popularization of the scientific method of getting at the truth and the meaning of things be thoroughly effected. Science, as its history plainly demonstrates, progresses most rapidly only when a great number of minds have been led to concentrate their powers upon its problems. Great genius, it is true, rides over obstacles; yet consider how much further its energies might have carried it if the obstacles had been more or less completely removed in advance. Many a young man has been led to a brilliant career, to the great advantage of his country and his time, as a result of the interest awakened in him by the clear statements of a popularly written book on some branch of science.

One of the difficulties that persons unfamiliar with certain branches of science encounter in reading about them arises from the excessive use of technical terms, the lack of simple illustrative examples, and also, sometimes, a lack of sympathetic appreciation of the reader's difficulties. It has been a special object of this series to avoid this trouble. Ordinary textbooks are prepared for students in school and are intended to be supplemented by the personal instruction and guidance of a teacher, standing at the pupil's elbow, or readily approachable. But the reader who wishes to inform himself upon some progressive branch of science after his school days are over needs to have the teacher included in the book itself.

Then, too, there are many persons who have no comprehension of the great and gratifying power that a knowledge of some of the elementary principles and formulas of science bestows upon anybody who may take the little trouble necessary to master them, a trouble that does not imply a long course of scientific study. The "man in the street," if he possesses these easy-working keys to knowledge, can verify for himself some of the calculations of scientists which, if he did not know how they were done, would always remain for him in the category of the mysterious achievements of genius.

This is only a single example among many that could be given to show the usefulness and interest of many of the formulas of science which the ordinary reader looks upon as beyond the reach of any person whose occupation leads him another way. But cases of equal simplicity could be found in connection with the subjects of electricity and magnetism, chemistry, medicine, physiology, etc. Sometimes it happens that a technical word contains its own definition and explanation in a nutshell. A striking instance of this will be found in astronomy, in the word "light-year." The meaning of this word stands forth on its face--it evidently expresses the distance that light travels in the course of one year. Now, since it is known by means of direct measurement that light goes at the rate of 186,300 miles per second, manifestly a light-year must be equivalent to an enormous number of miles. In fact that number, roundly stated, is no less than 5,860,000,000,000. But to what marvelous regions of thought such a term opens the way! Yonder star is 2,000 light-years distant from the earth; then its light-waves now entering your eyes left it when Julius Caesar was conquering Gaul, and have been speeding on their way to the earth ever since! Another star is found to be 5,000 light-years distant; then the light by which you now see it started from the star when Abraham set out from Ur of the Chaldees to settle in the Holy Land, and has not found a resting place anywhere in boundless space until just now when its tiny waves break and expire on the retina of your eye! Such treasures of knowledge and tonics to thought are scattered all through the volumes of this set, the purpose of whose publishers, editors, and writers has been to accumulate such things in small compass and in crystal clearness, for the use not only of those who, after their school days are over, still wish to keep abreast of the progress of science in all its branches--as everyone should strive to do in this most scientific of all ages--but also for those who have hitherto not had the time, or the opportunity, or perhaps even the desire, to make themselves at home in the house of science.

It may be well to add a few words on the interrelation of the different subjects treated in the various volumes of the series. This will suggest to the reader himself the best order in which to take up the reading of the books. Naturally he will desire to obtain both a clear general view of the whole field of science, and also more detailed acquaintance with its special parts, the amount of detail depending upon his particular interest in a subject. For the first purpose the preferable way would be to run first over the brief account that follows in this volume, of the history and development of science in general, and then to take up the simpler and more easily grasped branches.

But it should be firmly kept in mind that, fundamentally, science is one, having in all its branches but one aim and object, viz., the ascertainment and demonstration of the exact truth of things as far as human capacities are able to reveal and comprehend such truth, and also but one method of procedure, which is the method of common sense trained to the utmost attainable exactitude in observation and the greatest possible clearness and precision of reasoning. Science properly so-called confines itself to things that are subject to observation by the senses and to verification by repeated observation and experiment, while its reasonings and predictions are based entirely upon the unvarying sequence of the phenomena of nature, as they display themselves before us.

Science is just as one and inseparable as life, or as an organic being, and its divisions no more imply lack of unity than do the various organs and limbs of an animal, or a tree, or the different structural parts of a building. Astronomy is not entirely independent of geology, nor geology of botany, nor botany of chemistry, nor any of these of physics, nor physics of electricity and magnetism, nor the last of physiology and medicine. Accordingly the question where to begin in studying science is not one that can be answered in the same way for everybody. But the spirit is the same in all the branches.

Perhaps the best general indication of the order in which a person who has no predilection for any one branch of science should take up the various parts is afforded by their historic development. This was a result of the natural reaction of man's mind to its surroundings. The things nearest to him, and most immediately important, first attracted his attention. The broadest division would be into the science of things on the earth's surface; the science of things above the earth, in the air and the sky; and the science of things within the earth, concealed from immediate view.

If we take these in their order they naturally subdivide themselves as follows:

Anthropology, the Science of Man and His Ancestors, treating of his nature, origin, development, division into races and tribes, society, industry, etc.

Zo?logy, the Science of Animal Life, treating of the "lower animals," and of animal life in general as distinguished from the kingdom of the plants, although the related science of biology deals with both plants and animals, its special subject being the phenomena of life in its widest sense.

Botany, the Science of Plant Life.

Geography, combined with Physiography, the Science of the Face, or Superficies, of the Earth, dealing with lands and seas, rivers and mountains, political divisions, etc. This is covered in our series by the volume on Physiography.

In this compartment several branches of science may be grouped, since they are all the product of study of things encountered on the earth's surface. They are:

Astronomy, the Science of the Heavenly Bodies.

Meteorology, the Science of the Atmosphere, rains, winds, storms, fair and foul weather, the changes of the seasons, and essentially related to the new and fast developing art of aerial navigation.

Geology, the Science of the Earth's Crust, or shell; which also deals with the various stratifications of the rocks, superposed one above another, and containing in the shape of fossils, and other marks, a wonderful record of the character and development of the living forms that have inhabited the earth during the long ages of the past. Of course some of the phenomena dealt with by geology are manifest on the earth's surface, and others, like volcanoes and earthquakes, hot springs and geysers, are partly subterranean and concealed from sight and partly evident by their effects on the surface.

Closely associated with Geology are Mineralogy, the Science of the Constitution and Structure of Rocks and of Mineral and Metallic substances; Vulcanology, the Science of Volcanoes, and of earth disturbances in general; and the Science of Mining, which has several branches, and forms the basis of enormous industrial developments.

It is manifest, as before said, that the reader must be his own best judge as to the precise order in which to take up the perusal of the volumes in which this immense mass of scientific knowledge is presented. But, where there is no predisposition to choose one subject rather than another, or where there is a desire to follow, as nearly as may be, the natural line of development of human knowledge, it would be well to take first, after the history, the volume on astronomy, a science that from the beginning has had a peculiar power to awaken intellectual curiosity; then that on anthropology; then the various so-called "natural history" subjects, leaving the mechanical and the more technical subjects for the last.

Or, the reader might first take up the subjects of personal importance to every human being--Medicine, the Science of Health; Physiology, the Science of the Human Body; Psychology, the Science of the Mind--every one of which is essential to the proper care and preservation of life; and afterward study the other branches in the order already suggested.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

The romantic history of science shows how the discoveries of the greatest human minds, slowly operating since the remotest times, have made possible our present-day civilization. Few studies are worthy of greater attention; no other department of knowledge affords more real pleasure. Whoever clearly understands the history of science possesses intellectual advantages over those who are ignorant of the causes that have led to the establishment of the basic principles of our modern industrial arts and applied sciences. Standards of comparison are furnished by the history of science which illuminate many of the wonders of to-day, develop alertness of mind, and afford a never-ending train of suggestions for thought.

The term science means knowledge. It was derived from the language of the Romans. It is well to have a clear idea of the meaning of the word. Everyone knows that it has to do with certain kinds of knowledge; few know the particular kinds it embraces. It does not mean the mere knowledge of a single fact. It does not mean a knowledge of something which has to be done. Long before science was born, our early ancestors observed many isolated physical, philosophical, and religious facts. They knew that day followed night, that the stars moved, that every day the sun progressed over the arch of the heavens. Such facts did not constitute science.

What we know as science began when man commenced to compare one fact with another, to classify phenomena, and to arrange his knowledge systematically. Order, method, system, are basic principles of science. The best description would, therefore, appear to be systematized knowledge of any kind which had been gained and verified by exact observation and correct thinking. The whole field of human knowledge is now methodically formulated and arranged into rational systems. Modern science may, therefore, be said to embrace all our exact knowledge. Its province is enormous; its subdivisions are limitless.

Science takes no account of knowledge which is not exact. Many people acquire valuable information which they profitably use in business, but which they are unable to communicate or describe to others because they do not actually understand it.

Farmers and flower growers often possess important practical knowledge of facts which are embraced by the principles of the sciences of agriculture, botany, and biology. But their practical knowledge is not true science. It is rather like an artist's intuitive impulse. It is not the result of scientific analysis, and there is no tangible, communicable residuum.

There could be no science if men did not discover principles of knowledge which can be communicated to, and made available for use by others. Scientific knowledge must be stripped of all traces of emotionalism and personal convictions. True science is, therefore, depersonalized knowledge.

The history of science shows how our exact knowledge has been developed along irregular paths but with progressive advances. There have been long periods during which little apparent progress was accomplished, which have been succeeded by others made memorable by brilliant discoveries.

We must constantly bear in mind that many of the truths generally accepted to-day were doubtful or novel theories at some previous period. The history of science shows the enormous mental effort expended in testing and developing what now appear to us as commonplace truths.

Basic principles like those of algebra, geometry, and the planetary motions were tested during several thousand years before they were finally accepted as true.

The human intellect at the dawn of history was similar to what it is to-day. But it was not exercised as we exercise ours because it did not have adequate materials and opportunities. For the same reason science made slower progress in early times than it does now. Progress is cumulative. Each advance helps that which follows. The functions of a scientist are to struggle against individual views, and to provide an explanation of phenomena which may be accepted as true by other minds. Ascertained facts must be classified and then sequence and significance recognized from an unbiased viewpoint.

The history of science is the written record of countless experiments, theories, and experiences of mankind which have been submitted to the tests of scientific methods.

While it is true that science embraces all knowledge its real scope is limited to knowledge which is reducible to laws and can be embodied in systems. The human mind unites all knowledge by a single thread, but we have to chart and map it into larger and smaller divisions which we define by the methods, basic concepts, and plans used in developing them.

We may now see how it is that the boundaries of any science are merely approximate. The general grouping of the sciences is likewise approximate. The first large group includes the abstract, or formal, sciences such as mathematics and logic. The other great group comprises the concrete sciences dealing with phenomena as contrasted with formal relationships. Chemistry, biology, physics, psychology, and sociology belong to the concrete group.

At the beginning of history man is discovered observing the great phenomena of Nature and struggling to learn their laws and to explain them. Religion is both emotional and intellectual, and through these qualities it attracted primitive man while he was attempting to gather light on the riddles of the world. It was through religion that science was born.

Recent researches into primitive beliefs have shown in a surprising manner the psychological unity of man. In all parts of the world, in all periods of history, and under all conditions, the minds of men, in their natural reactions against the basic factors of existence, operate in similar ways. There is a remarkable resemblance in the mental processes of men. The laws of thought appear to work automatically in all men. The minds of prehistoric people worked like those of men to-day. The impressions of the senses appear to be interpreted in similar ways by all peoples. Here is the explanation of the numerous resemblances we find in national histories, national folk lore, and national religions. They differ much in innumerable details, but possess many resemblances in their great fundamental conceptions. Normal man has always been religious. Mankind has always assumed definite attitudes toward the universe and this has resulted in the universality of religion.

Early men the world over appear to have been as eager to learn the keys to the riddles of the universe as was the boy Longfellow sang about in the following stanzas:

Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: "Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee."

"Come wander with me," she said, "Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God."

And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more marvelous tale.

Modern science has developed from this instinctive human desire to read Nature's story-book and understand her marvelous tales.

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