There is an attempt at induction going on, which has yielded little or no
fruit, the observations made in the meteorological observatories. This
attempt is carried on in a manner which would have caused Bacon to dance
for joy; for he lived in times when Chancellors did dance. {85} Russia,
says M. Biot,[128] is covered by an army of meteorographs, with generals,
high officers, subalterns, and privates with fixed and defined duties of
observation. Other countries have also their systematic observations. And
what has come of it? Nothing, says M. Biot, and nothing will ever come of
it; the veteran mathematician and experimental philosopher declares, as
does Mr. Ellis, that no single branch of science has ever been fruitfully
explored in this way. There is no _special object_, he says. Any one would
suppose that M. Biot's opinion, given to the French Government upon the
proposal to construct meteorological observatories in Algeria (_Comptes
Rendus_, vol. xli, Dec. 31, 1855), was written to support the mythical
Bacon, modern physics, against the real Bacon of the _Novum Organum_. There
is no _special object_. In these words lies the difference between the two
methods.
[In the report to the Greenwich Board of Visitors for 1867 Mr. Airy,[129]
speaking of the increase of meteorological observatories, remarks, "Whether
the effect of this movement will be that millions of useless observations
will be added to the millions that already exist, or whether something may
be expected to result which will lead to a meteorological theory, I cannot
hazard a conjecture." This _is_ a conjecture, and a very obvious one: if
Mr. Airy would have given 2-3/4d. for the chance of a meteorological theory
formed by masses of observations, he would never have said what I have
quoted.]