Three presidential addresses to the Chemical Section of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow : on the study of the history of chemistry, recent inquiries into the early history of chemistry, eleven centuries of chemistry / by John Ferguson.

  • John Ferguson
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Three presidential addresses to the Chemical Section of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow : on the study of the history of chemistry, recent inquiries into the early history of chemistry, eleven centuries of chemistry / by John Ferguson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    12/60 page 10
    science to the earliest periods of recorded chronology. They thought, perhaps, that since it was so venerable and weighty by its age, which was undoubted, it must be still more reverenced if it could be shewn to have had an existence from the very beginning of time. But if we follow the example thus set us, and also carry back to a very early time the origin of the modern science, it would be necessary to explain the sense in which the word origin is used. I should employ it then to denote, not a commencement relative or absolute, but rather the causes and conditions of growth, and the emergence of a denned course of thought from among a set of stray observations and casual remarks. What these causes and condi- tions were could be considered only in the history itself. From what has been said there seem to be various ways in which the history of chemistry, like other histories, may be treated. In- fluenced by the importance of the ideas of any epoch, we may seek to bring them into prominence, and pass over slightly the manner in which they developed. To some extent this mode of dealing with history is not without advantages. It happens, however, sometimes that the ideas are not presented in their entirety in a concrete example. More frequently they dominate in the general tone of thought or manner of regarding phenomena, and it would accord- ingly require several examples for every side to be exhibited. In the selection of theso examples, however, and treatment of them, it is possible to investigate the history of chemistry from another side, and with rather different results. For if we choose, as we must do, the best instances of any period—the representative men whom it presents—we shall arrive at a knowledge, not of the abstract impersonal ideas of the time, but the influence of these agents in embodying them, in modifying and reducing them to practice. Thus, if by the former process we recognise in the ideas the highest historical abstractions, obtained by the adjustment of many opposing claims, of many conflicting facts and hypotheses—and by filling up from other sources and knowledge of what ought to be, the imperfect notions inductively obtained —the embodiment of these ideas are the authors of the discoveries which led to them, the men who changed the aspect of the science for their successors, until their own changes had to be changed, and whose names designate their whole epoch. History of ideas becomes history of their ideas; and in contemplating what they attempted, and wherein they suc- ceeded and failed, we obtain one of the lessons which history supplies. It is not possible for me to enter on further details, to search out causes, or even to sketch, on the wide plan referred to above, an
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3