Page:A short history of astronomy(1898).djvu/231

§ 134] astronomy he was building on foundations laid by previous generations, in dynamics it was no question of improving or developing an existing science, but of creating a new one. From his predecessors he inherited nothing but erroneous traditions and obscure ideas; and when these had been discarded, he had to arrive at clear fundamental notions, to devise experiments and make observations, to interpret his experimental results, and to follow out the mathematical consequences of the simple laws first arrived at. The positive results obtained may not appear numerous, if viewed from the standpoint of our modern knowledge, but they sufficed to constitute a secure basis for the super-structure which later investigators added.

It is customary to associate with our countryman Francis Bacon (1561–1627) the reform in methods of scientific discovery which took place during the seventeenth century, and to which much of the rapid progress in the natural sciences made since that time must be attributed. The value of Bacon's theory of scientific discovery is very differently estimated by different critics, but there can be no question of the singular ill-success which attended his attempts to apply it in particular cases, and it may fairly be questioned whether the scientific methods constantly referred to incidentally by Galilei, and brilliantly exemplified by his practice, do not really contain a large part of what is valuable in the Baconian philosophy of science, while at the same time avoiding some of its errors. Reference has already been made on several occasions to Galilei's protests against the current method of dealing with scientific questions by the interpretation of passages in Aristotle, Ptolemy, or other writers; and to his constant insistence on the necessity of appealing directly to actual observation of facts. But while thus agreeing with Bacon in these essential points, he differed from him in the recognition of the importance, both of deducing new results from established ones by mathematical or other processes of exact reasoning, and of using such deductions, when compared with fresh experimental results, as a means of verifying hypotheses provisionally adopted. This method of proof, which lies at the base of nearly all important scientific discovery, can hardly be described better than by 12