Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/57



N the present anniversary, which is the conclusion of my first year of office as President of this Institute, I propose to address a few words to you bearing on the object of the Institute, and on the spirit in which, as I conceive, that object is best carried out.

The highest aim of physical science is, as far as may be possible, to refer observed phenomena to their proximate causes. I by no means say that this is the immediate, or even necessarily the ultimate, object of every physical investigation. Sometimes our object is to investigate facts, or to co-ordinate known facts, and endeavor to discover empirical laws. These are useful as far as they go, and may ultimately lead to the formation of theories which in the end so stand the test of what I may call cross-examination by Nature, that we become impressed with the conviction of their truth. Sometimes our object is the determination of numerical constants, with a view, it may be, to the practical application of science to the wants of life.

To illustrate what I am saying, allow me to refer to a very familiar example. From the earliest ages men must have observed the heavenly bodies. The great bulk of those brilliant points with which at night the sky is spangled when clouds permit of their being seen, retain the same relative positions night after night and year after year. But a few among them are seen to change their places relatively to the rest and to one another. The fact of this change is embodied in the very name, planet, by which these bodies are designated. I shall say nothing here about the establishment of the Copernican system: I shall assume that as known and admitted. The careful observations of astronomers on the apparent places, from time to time, of these wandering bodies among the fixed stars supplied us, in the first instance, with a wide basis of isolated facts. After a vast amount of labor, Kepler at last succeeded in discovering the three famous laws which go by his name. Here, then, we have the second stage; the vast assemblage of isolated facts are co-ordinated, and embraced in a few simple laws. As yet, however, we can not say that the idea of causation has entered in. But now Newton arises, and shows that the very same property of matter which causes an apple to fall to the earth, which causes our own bodies to press on the earth on which we stand, suffices to account for those laws which Kepler discovered—nay, more, those laws themselves are only very approximately true; and, when we consider the places of the planets, at times separated by a considerable interval, we are obliged to suppose that the elements of