By CHARLES KINGSLEY.
The scientific method needs no definition; for it is simply the
exercise of common sense. It is not a peculiar, unique, professional,
or mysterious process of the understanding; but the same which all men
employ, from the cradle to the grave, in forming correct conclusions.
Every one who knows the philosophic writings of Mr. John Stuart Mill,
will be familiar with this opinion. But to those who have no leisure to
study him, I should recommend the reading of Professor Huxley’s third
lecture on the origin of species.
In that he shows, with great logical skill, as well as with some humor,
how the man who, on rising in the morning finds the parlor-window
open, the spoons and teapot gone, the mark of a dirty hand on the
window-sill, and that of a hob-nailed boot outside, and comes to the
conclusion that someone has broken open the window, and stolen the
plate, arrives at that hypothesis—for it is nothing more—by a long and
complex train of inductions and deductions of just the same kind as
those which, according to the Baconian philosophy, are to be used for
investigating the deepest secrets of Nature.
This is true, even of those sciences which involve long mathematical
calculations. In fact, the stating of the problem to be solved is the
most important element in the calculation; and that is so thoroughly
a labor of common sense that an utterly uneducated man may, and often
does, state an abstruse problem clearly and correctly; seeing what
ought to be proved, and perhaps how to prove it, though he may be
unable to work the problem out for want of mathematical knowledge.
But that mathematical knowledge is not—as all Cambridge men are surely
aware—the result of any special gift. It is merely the development
of those conceptions of form and number which every human being
possesses; and any person of average intellect can make himself a
fair mathematician if he will only pay continuous attention; in plain
English, think enough about the subject.
There are sciences, again, which do not involve mathematical
calculation; for instance, botany, zoölogy, geology, which are just now
passing from their old stage of classificatory sciences into the rank
of organic ones. These are, without doubt, altogether within the scope
of the merest common sense. Any man or woman of average intellect,
if they will but observe and think for themselves, freely, boldly,
patiently, accurately, may judge for themselves of the conclusions of
these sciences, and may add to these conclusions fresh and important
discoveries.
Let me illustrate my meaning by an example. A man—I do not say a
geologist, but simply a man, ’squire or ploughman—sees a small valley,
say one of the side-glens which open into the larger valleys in any
country. He wishes to ascertain its age.
He has, at first sight, a very simple measure—that of denudation.
He sees that the glen is now being eaten out by a little stream,
the product of innumerable springs which arise along its sides, and
which are fed entirely by the rain on the moors above. He finds, on
observation, that this stream brings down some ten cubic yards of sand
and gravel, on an average, every year. The actual quantity of earth
which has been removed to make the glen may be several million cubic
yards. Here is an easy sum in arithmetic. At the rate of ten cubic
yards a year, the stream has taken several hundred thousand years to
make the glen.
You will observe that this result is obtained by mere common sense.
He has a right to assume that the stream originally began the glen,
because he finds it in the act of enlarging it; just as much right as
he has to assume, if he find a hole in his pocket, and his last coin in
the act of falling through it, that the rest of his money has fallen
through the same hole. It is a sufficient cause, and the simplest. A
number of observations as to the present rate of denudation, and a
sum which any railroad contractor can do in his head, to determine
the solid contents of the valley, are all that are needed. The method
is that of science: but it is also that of simple common sense. You
will remember, therefore, that this is no mere theory or hypothesis,
but a pretty fair and simple conclusion from palpable facts; that the
probability lies with the belief that the glen is some hundreds of
thousands of years old; that it is not the observer’s business to prove
it further, but other persons’ to disprove it, if they can.
But does the matter end here? No. And, for certain reasons, it is good
that it should not end here.
The observer, if he be a cautious man, begins to see if he can disprove
his own conclusions; moreover, being human, he is probably somewhat
awed, if not appalled, by his own conclusions. Hundreds of thousands
of years spent in making that little glen! Common sense would say that
the longer it took to make, the less wonder there was in its being
made at last: but the instinctive human feeling is the opposite. There
is in men, and there remains in them, even after they are civilized,
and all other forms of the dread of Nature have died out in them, a
dread of size, of vast space, of vast time; that latter, mind, being
always imagined as space, as we confess when we speak instinctively
of a space of time. They will not understand that size is merely a
relative, not an absolute term; that if we were a thousand times larger
than we are, the universe would be a thousand times smaller than it is;
that if we could think a thousand times faster than we do, time would
be a thousand times longer than it is; that there is One in whom we
live, and move, and have our being, to whom one day is as a thousand
years, and a thousand years as one day. I believe this dread of size
to be merely, like all other superstitions, a result of bodily fear;
a development of the instinct which makes a little dog run away from
a big dog. Be that as it may, every observer has it; and so the man’s
conclusion seems to him strange, doubtful: he will reconsider it.
Moreover, if he be an experienced man, he is well aware that first
guesses, first hypotheses, are not always the right ones: and if he
be a modest man, he will consider the fact that many thousands of
thoughtful men in all ages, and many thousands still, would say, that
the glen can only be a few thousand, possibly a few hundred, years old.
And he will feel bound to consider their opinion; as far as it is, like
his own, drawn from facts, but no further.
So he casts about for all other methods by which the glen may have been
produced, to see if any one of them will account for it in a shorter
time.
1. Was it made by an earthquake? No; for the strata on both sides are
identical, at the same level, and in the same plane.
2. Or by a mighty current? If so, the flood must have run in at the
upper end before it ran out at the lower. But nothing has run in at
the upper end. All round above are the undisturbed gravel-beds of the
horizontal moor, without channel or depression.
3. Or by water draining off a vast flat as it was upheaved out of the
sea? That is a likely guess. The valley at its upper end spreads out
like the fingers of a hand, as the gullies in tide-muds do.
But that hypothesis will not stand. There is no vast unbroken flat
behind the glen. Right and left of it are other similar glens, parted
from it by long narrow ridges: these also must be explained on the
same hypothesis; but they can not. For there could not have been
surface-drainage to make them all, or a tenth of them. There are no
other possible hypotheses; and so he must fall back on the original
theory—the rain, the springs, the brook; they have done it all, even as
they are doing it this day.
But is not that still a hasty assumption? May not their denuding power
have been far greater in old times than now?
Why should it? Because there was more rain then than now? That he must
put out of court; there is no evidence of it whatsoever.
Because the land was more friable originally? Well, there is a great
deal to be said for that. The experience of every countryman tells him
that bare or fallow land is more easily washed away than land under
vegetation. And no doubt, when these gravels and sands rose from the
sea, they were barren for hundreds of years. He has some measure of the
time required, but he can tell roughly how long it takes for sands and
shingles left by the sea to become covered by vegetation. But he must
allow that the friability of the land must have been originally much
greater than now, for hundreds of years.
But again, does that fact really cut off any great space of time from
his hundreds of thousands of years? For when the land first rose from
the sea, that glen was not there. Some slight bay or bend in the shore
determined its site. That stream was not there. It was split up into a
million little springs, oozing side by side from the shore, and having
each a very minute denuding power, which kept continually increasing by
combination as the glen ate its way inwards, and the rainfall drained
by all these little springs was collected into the one central stream.
So that when the ground being bare was most liable to be denuded, the
water was least able to do it; and as the denuding power of the water
increased, the land, being covered with vegetation, became more and
more able to resist it.
So the two disturbing elements in the calculation may be fairly set
off against each other, as making a difference of only a few thousands
or tens of thousands of years either way; and the age of the glen
may fairly be, if not a million years, yet such a length of years as
mankind still speak of with bated breath, as if forsooth it would do
them some harm.
I trust that every scientific man will agree with me, that the
imaginary ’squire or ploughman would have been conducting his
investigation strictly according to the laws of the Baconian
philosophy. You will remark, meanwhile, that he has not used a single
scientific term, or referred to a single scientific investigation; and
has observed nothing and thought nothing, which might not have been
observed and thought by any one who chose to use his common sense, and
not to be afraid.
But because he has come round, after all this further investigation,
to something very like his first conclusion, was all that further
investigation useless? No—a thousand times, no. It is this very
verification of hypotheses which makes the sound ones safe, and
destroys the unsound. It is this struggle with all sorts of
superstitions which makes science strong and sure, and her march
irresistible, winning ground slowly, but never receding from it. It is
this buffeting of adversity which compels her not to rest dangerously
upon the shallow sand of first guesses, and single observations; but
to strike her roots down, deep, wide, and interlaced, into the solid
ground of actual facts.
It is very necessary to insist on this point. For there have been men
in all past ages—I do not say whether there are any such now, but
I am inclined to think there will be hereafter,—men who have tried
to represent scientific method as something difficult, mysterious,
peculiar, unique, not to be attained by the unscientific mass;
and this not for the purpose of exalting science, but rather of
discrediting her. For as long as the masses, educated or uneducated,
are ignorant of what scientific method is, they will look on scientific
men, as the middle age looked on necromancers, as a privileged, but
awful and uncanny caste, possessed of mighty secrets; who may do them
great good, but also may do them great harm. Which belief on the part
of the masses will enable these persons to install themselves as the
critics of science, though not scientific men themselves: and—as
Shakspere has it—to talk of Robin Hood, though they never shot in his
bow. Thus they become mediators to the masses between the scientific
and the unscientific worlds. They tell them, You are not to trust the
conclusions of men of science at first hand. You are not fit judges
of their facts or of their methods. It is we who will, by a cautious
electicism, choose out for you such of their conclusions as are safe
for you; and them we will advise you to believe. To the scientific
man, on the other hand, as often as anything is discovered unpleasing
to them, they will say, imperiously and _ex cathedrâ_, Your new theory
contradicts the established facts of science. For they will know well
that whatever the men of science think of their assertion, the masses
will believe it; totally unaware that the speakers are by their very
terms showing their ignorance of science; and that what they call
established facts scientific men call merely provisional conclusions,
which they would throw away to-morrow without a pang were the known
facts explained better by a fresh theory, or did fresh facts require
one.
This has happened too often. It is in the interest of superstition that
it should happen again; and the best way to prevent it surely is to
tell the masses, Scientific method is no peculiar mystery, requiring a
peculiar initiation. It is simply common sense, combined with uncommon
courage, which includes uncommon honesty and uncommon patience; and
if you will be brave, honest, patient, rational, you will need no
mystagogues to tell you what in science to believe and what not to
believe; for you will be just as good judges of scientific facts and
theories as those who assume the right of guiding your convictions. You
are men and women: and more than that you need not be.