On the Philosophy of Discovery, Chapters Historical and Critical. William Whewell

Grote well observes, the community of character which then subsisted between the physical and ethical speculations prevailing at that time, ceased to obtain in later times. Indeed, it ceased to exist just at that time, in consequence of the establishment of scientific astronomy by the exertions of Plato and his contemporaries. From that time the Common Sense (as we call it) of a man like Socrates, though it might be a good guide in ethics, was not a good guide in physics. I have shown elsewhere[39] how the Common Sense of Socrates was worthless in matters of astronomy. From that time one of the great intellectual lessons was, that in order to understand the external world, we must indeed observe carefully, but we must also guess boldly. Discovery here required an inventive mind like Plato's to deal with and arrange new and varied facts. But in ethics all the facts were old and familiar, and the generalizations of language by which they were grouped as Virtues and Vices, and the like, were common and well-known words. Here was no room for invention; and thus in the ethical speculations of Socrates or of any other moral teacher, we are not to look for any contributions to the Philosophy of Discovery.

      Nor do I find anything on this subject among later Greek writers, beyond the commendation of such intellectual virtues as Hippocrates and Galen, and other medical writers, schooled by the practice of their art, enjoined and praised. But before we quit the ancients I will point out some peculiarities which may be noticed in the Roman disciples of the Greek philosophy.

      CHAPTER VII.

       The Romans.

       Table of Contents

      The Romans had no philosophy but that which they borrowed from the Greeks; and what they thus received, they hardly made entirely their own. The vast and profound question of which we have been speaking, the relation between Existence and our Knowledge of what exists, they never appear to have fathomed, even so far as to discern how wide and deep it is. In the development of the ideas by which nature is to be understood, they went no further than their Greek masters had gone, nor indeed was more to be looked for. And in the practical habit of accumulating observed facts as materials for knowledge, they were much less discriminating and more credulous than their Greek predecessors. The descent from Aristotle to Pliny, in the judiciousness of the authors and the value of their collections of facts, is immense.

      Since the Romans were thus servile followers of their Greek teachers, and little acquainted with any example of new truths collected from the world around them, it was not to be expected that they could have any just conception of that long and magnificent ascent from one set of truths to others of higher order and wider compass, which the history of science began to exhibit when the human mind recovered its progressive habits. Yet some dim presentiment of the splendid career thus destined for the intellect of man appears from time to time to have arisen in their minds. Perhaps the circumstance which most powerfully contributed to suggest this vision, was the vast intellectual progress which they were themselves conscious of having made, through the introduction of the Greek philosophy; and to this may be added, perhaps, some other features of national character. Their temper was too stubborn to acquiesce in the absolute authority of the Greek philosophy, although their minds were not inventive enough to establish a rival by its side. And the wonderful progress of their political power had given them a hope in the progress of man which the Greeks never possessed. The Roman, as he believed the fortune of his State to be destined for eternity, believed also in the immortal destiny and endless advance of that Intellectual Republic of which he had been admitted a denizen.

      It is easy to find examples of such feelings as I have endeavoured to describe. The enthusiasm with which Lucretius and Virgil speak of physical knowledge, manifestly arises in a great measure from the delight which they had felt in becoming acquainted with the Greek theories.

      Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musæ

      Quarum sacra fero ingenti perculsus amore

      Accipiant, cœlique vias et sidera monstrent,

      Defectus Solis varios, Lunæque labores! …

      Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas!

      Ye sacred Muses, with whose beauty fir'd,

      My soul is ravisht and my brain inspir'd:

      Whose Priest I am, whose holy fillets wear,

      Would you your Poet's first petition hear,

      Give me the ways of wand'ring stars to know,

      The depth of Heaven above and Earth below;

      Teach me the various labours of the Moon,

      And whence proceed th' eclipses of the Sun;

      Why flowing Tides prevail upon the main,

      And in what dark abyss they shrink again;

      What shakes the solid Earth; what cause delays

      The Summer Nights; and shortens Winter Days. …

      Happy the man who, studying Nature's Laws,

      Through known effects can trace the secret cause!

      Ovid[40] expresses a similar feeling.

      Felices animos quibus hæc cognoscere primis

      Inque domos superas scandere cura fuit! …

      Admovere oculis distantia sidera nostris

      Ætheraque ingenio supposuere suo.

      Sic petitur cœlum: non ut ferat Ossam Olympus

      Summaque Peliacus sidera tanget apex.

      Thrice happy souls! to whom 'twas given to rise

      To truths like these, and scale the spangled skies!

      Far distant stars to clearest view they brought,

      And girdled ether with their chain of thought.

      So heaven is reached:—not as of old they tried

      By mountains piled on mountains in their pride.

      And from the whole tenour of these and similar passages, it is evident that the intellectual pleasure which arises from our first introduction to a beautiful physical theory had a main share in producing this enthusiasm at the contemplation of the victories of science; although undoubtedly the moral philosophy, which was never separated from the natural philosophy, and the triumph over superstitious fears, which a knowledge of nature was supposed to furnish, added warmth to the feeling of exultation.

      We may trace a similar impression in the ardent expressions which Pliny[41] makes use of in speaking of the early astronomers, and which we have quoted in the History. "Great men! elevated above the common standard of human nature, by discovering the laws which celestial occurrences obey, and by freeing the wretched mind of man from the fears which eclipses inspired."

      This exulting contemplation of what science had done, naturally led the mind to an anticipation of further achievements still to be performed. Expressions of this feeling occur in Seneca, and are of the most remarkable kind, as the following example will show[42]:

      "Why do we wonder that comets, so rare a phenomenon, have not yet had their laws assigned?—that we should know so little of their beginning and their end, when their recurrence is at wide intervals? It is not yet fifteen hundred years since Greece,

      Stellis numeros et nomina fecit,

      'reckoned the stars, and gave them names.' There are still many nations which are acquainted with the heavens by sight only; which do not yet know why the moon disappears, why she is eclipsed. It is but lately that among us philosophy has reduced these matters to a certainty. The day shall come when the course of time and the labour of a maturer age shall bring to light what is yet concealed. One generation, even if it devoted itself to the skies, is not enough for researches so extensive. How then can it be so, when we divide this scanty allowance of years into no equal shares between our studies and our vices? These things then must be explained by a long succession of inquiries. We have