until thermology overtook and aided it. When Boyle and Marriot had discovered the relation between the densities of gases and the pressures they are subject to; and when it thus became possible to calculate the rate of decreasing density in the upper parts of the atmosphere; it also became possible to make approximate tables of the atmospheric refraction of light. Thus optics, and with it astronomy, advanced with barology. After the discovery of atmospheric pressure had led to the invention of the air-pump by Otto Guericke; and after it had become known that evaporation increases in rapidity as atmospheric pressure decreases; it became possible for Leslie, by evaporation in a vacuum, to produce the greatest cold known; and so to extend our knowledge of thermology by showing that there is no zero within reach of our researches. When Fourier had determined the laws of conduction of heat, and when the Earth’s temperature had been found to increase below the surface one degree in every forty yards, there were data for inferring the past condition of our globe; the vast period it has taken to cool down to its present state; and the immense age of the solar system – a purely astronomical consideration. Chemistry having advanced sufficiently to supply the needful materials, and a physiological experiment having furnished the requisite hint, there came the discovery of galvanic electricity. Galvanism reacting on chemistry disclosed the metallic bases of the alkalies and earths, and inaugurated the electro-chemical theory; in the hands of Oersted and Ampère it led to the laws of magnetic action; and by its aid Faraday has detected significant facts relative to the constitution of light. Brewster’s discoveries respecting double refraction and dipolarization proved the essential truth of the classification of crystalline forms according to the number of axes, by showing that the molecular constitution depends on the axes. Now in these and in numerous other cases, the mutual influence of the sciences has been quite independent of any supposed hierarchical order. Often, too, their inter-actions are more complex than as thus instanced – involve more sciences than two. One illustration of this must suffice. We quote it in full from the History of the Inductive Sciences. In Book XI., chap. II., on “The Progress of the Electrical Theory,” Dr. Whewell writes: —
“Thus at that period, mathematics was behind experiment, and a problem was proposed, in which theoretical numerical results were wanted for comparison with observation, but could not be accurately obtained; as was the case in astronomy also, till the time of the approximate solution of the problem of three bodies, and the consequent formation of the tables of the moon and planets, on the theory of universal gravitation. After some time, electrical theory was relieved from this reproach, mainly in consequence of the progress which astronomy had occasioned in pure mathematics. About 1801 there appeared in the Bulletin des Sciences , an exact solution of the problem of the distribution of electric fluid on a spheroid, obtained by Biot, by the application of the peculiar methods which Laplace had invented for the problem of the figure of the planets. And, in 1811, M. Poisson applied Laplace’s artifices to the case of two spheres acting upon one another in contact, a case to which many of Coulomb’s experiments were referrible; and the agreement of the results of theory and observation, thus extricated from Coulomb’s numbers obtained above forty years previously, was very striking and convincing.”
Not only do the sciences affect each other after this direct manner, but they affect each other indirectly. Where there is no dependence, there is yet analogy – likeness of relations; and the discovery of the relations subsisting among one set of phenomena, constantly suggests a search for similar relations among another set. Thus the established fact that the force of gravitation varies inversely as the square of the distance, being recognized as a necessary characteristic of all influences proceeding from a centre, raised the suspicion that heat and light follow the same law; which proved to be the case – a suspicion and a confirmation which were repeated in respect to the electric and magnetic forces. Thus, again, the discovery of the polarization of light led to experiments which ended in the discovery of the polarization of heat – a discovery that could never have been made without the antecedent one. Thus, too, the known refrangibility of light and heat lately produced the inquiry whether sound also is not refrangible; which on trial it turns out to be. In some cases, indeed, it is only by the aid of conceptions derived from one class of phenomena that hypotheses respecting other classes can be formed. The theory, at one time favoured, that evaporation is a solution of water in air, assumed that the relation between water and air is like the relation between water and a dissolved solid; and could never have been conceived if relations like that between salt and water had not been previously known. Similarly the received theory of evaporation – that it is a diffusion of the particles of the evaporating fluid in virtue of their atomic repulsion – could not have been entertained without a foregoing experience of magnetic and electric repulsions. So complete in recent days has become this consensus among the sciences, caused either by the natural entanglement of their phenomena, or by analogies between the relations of their phenomena, that scarcely any considerable discovery concerning one order of facts now takes place, without shortly leading to discoveries concerning other orders.
To produce a complete conception of this process of scientific evolution it would be needful to go back to the beginning, and trace in detail the growth of classifications and nomenclatures; and to show how, as subsidiary to science, they have acted upon it while it has reacted upon them. We can only now remark that, on the one hand, classifications and nomenclatures have aided science by subdividing the subject-matter of research, and giving fixity and diffusion to the truths disclosed; and that on the other hand, they have caught from it that increasing quantitativeness, and that progress from considerations touching single phenomena to considerations touching the relations among many phenomena, which we have been describing. Of this last influence a few illustrations must be given. In chemistry it is seen in the facts that the dividing of matter into the four elements was ostensibly based on the single property of weight, that the first truly chemical division into acid and alkaline bodies, grouped together bodies which had not simply one property in common but in which one property was constantly related to many others, and that the classification now current, places together in the groups supporters of combustion , metallic and non-metallic bases , acids , salts , &c., bodies which are often quite unlike in sensible qualities, but which are like in the majority of their relations to other bodies. In mineralogy again, the first classifications were based on differences in aspect, texture, and other physical attributes. Berzelius made two attempts at a classification based solely on chemical constitution. That now current recognizes, as far as possible, the relations between physical and chemical characters. In botany the earliest classes formed were trees , shrubs , and herbs: magnitude being the basis of distinction. Dioscorides divided vegetables into aromatic , alimentary , medicinal , and vinous: a division of chemical character. Cæsalpinus classified them by the seeds and seed-vessels, which he preferred because of the relations found to subsist between the character of the fructification and the general character of the other parts. While the “natural system” since developed, carrying out the doctrine of Linnæus, that “the natural orders must be formed by attention not to one or two, but to all the parts of plants,” bases its divisions on like peculiarities which are found to be constantly related to the greatest number of other like peculiarities. And similarly in zoology, the successive classifications, from having been originally determined by external and often subordinate characters not indicative of the essential nature, have been more and more determined by those internal and fundamental differences, which have uniform relations to the greatest number of other differences. Nor shall we be surprised at this analogy between the modes of progress of positive science and classification, when we bear in mind that both proceed by making generalizations; that both enable us to make previsions, differing only in their precision; and that while the one deals with equal properties, magnitudes, and relations, the other deals with properties and relations which approximate towards equality in various degrees.
Without further argument it will, we think, be admitted that the sciences are none of them separately evolved – are none of them independent either logically or historically; but that all of them have, in a greater or less degree, required aid and reciprocated it. Indeed, it needs but to throw aside hypotheses, and contemplate the mixed character of surrounding phenomena, to see at once that these notions of division and succession in the kinds of knowledge are simply scientific
