Decline of Science in England by Charles Babbage (red white royal blue txt) đź“–
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foundation; one in gold, one in silver.
If these rules are not the wisest which might have been formed,
yet they are tolerably explicit; and it might have been imagined
that even a councillor of the Royal Society, prepared for office
by the education of a pleader, could not have mystified his
brethren so completely, as to have made them doubt on the point
of time. The rules fixed precisely, that the discoveries or
experiments rewarded, must be completed and made known to the
Royal Society, within the YEAR PRECEDING THE DAY of the award.
Perhaps it might have been a proper mark of respect to this
communication, to have convened a special general meeting of the
Society, to have made known to the whole body the munificent
endowment of their Patron: and when his approbation of the laws
which were to govern the distribution of these medals had been
intimated to the Council, such a course would have been in
complete accordance with the wish expressed in Mr. Peel’s letter,
“TO EXCITE COMPETITION AMONGST MEN OF SCIENCE” by making them
generally known.
Let us now examine the first award of these medals: it is
recorded in the following words:—
November 16, 1826.
ONE of the medals of His Majesty’s donation for the present year
was awarded to John Dalton, Esq. President of the Philosophical
and Literary Society, Manchester, for his development of the
Atomic Theory, and his other important labours and discoveries in
physical science.
The other medal for the present year was awarded to James Ivory,
Esq. for his paper on Astronomical Refractions, published in the
Philosophical Transactions for the year 1823, and his other
valuable papers on mathematical subjects.
The Copley medal was awarded to James South, Esq. for his
observations of double stars, and his paper on the discordances
between the sun’s observed and computed right ascensions,
published in the Transactions.
It is difficult to believe that the same Council, which, in
January, formed the laws for the distribution of these medals,
should meet together in November, and in direct violation of
these laws, award them to two philosophers, one of whom had made,
and fully established, his great discovery almost twenty years
before; and the other of whom (to stultify themselves still more
effectually) they expressly rewarded for a paper made known to
them three years before.
Were the rules for the award of these medals read previous to
their decision? Or were the obedient Council only used to
register the edict of their President? Or were they mocked, as
they have been in other instances, with the semblance of a free
discussion?
Has it never occurred to gentlemen who have been thus situated,
that although they have in truth had no part in the decision, yet
the Society and the public will justly attribute a portion of the
merit or demerit of their award, to those to whom that trust was
confided?
Did no one member of the Council venture, with the most
submissive deference, to suggest to the President, that the
public eye would watch with interest this first decision on the
Royal medals, and that it might perhaps be more discreet to
adjudge them, for the first time, in accordance with the laws
which had been made for their distribution? Or was public
opinion then held in supreme contempt? Was it scouted, as I have
myself heard it scouted, in the councils of the Royal Society?
Or was the President exempt, on this occasion, from the
responsibility of dictating an award in direct violation of the
faith which had been pledged to the Society and to the public?
and, did the Council, intent on exercising a power so rarely
committed to them; and, perhaps, urged by the near approach of
their hour of dinner, dispense with the formality of reading the
laws on which they were about to act?
Whatever may have been the cause, the result was most calamitous
to the Society. Its decision was attacked on other grounds; for,
with a strange neglect, the Council had taken no pains to make
known, either to the Society, or to the public, the rules they
had made for the adjudication of these medals.
The evils resulting from this decision were many. In the first
place, it was most indecorous and ungrateful to treat with such
neglect the rules which had been approved by our Royal Patron.
In the next place, the medals themselves became almost worthless
from this original taint: and they ceased to excite “competition
amongst men of science,” because no man could feel the least
security that he should get them, even though his discoveries
should fulfil all the conditions on which they were offered,
The great injury which accrued to science from this proceeding,
induced me, in the succeeding session, when I found myself on the
Council of the Royal Society, to endeavour to remove the stigma
which rested on our character. Whether I took the best means to
remedy the evil is now a matter of comparatively little
consequence: had I found any serious disposition to set it
right, I should readily have aided in any plans for doing that
which I felt myself bound to attempt, even though I should stand
alone, as I had the misfortune of doing on that occasion. [It is
but justice to Mr. South, who was a member of that Council, to
state, that the circumstance of his having had the Copley medal
of the same year awarded to him, prevented him from taking any
part in the discussion.]
The impression which the whole of that discussion made on my mind
will never be effaced. Regarding the original rules formed for
the distribution of the Royal medals, when approved by his
Majesty, as equally binding in honour and in justice, I viewed
the decision of the Council, which assigned those medals to Mr.
Dalton and Mr. Ivory, as void, IPSO FACTO, on the ground that it
was directly at variance with that part which CONFINES the medals
to discoveries made known to the Society within ONE YEAR PREVIOUS
TO THE DAY OF THEIR AWARD. I therefore moved the following
resolutions:
“1st, That the award of the Royal medals, made on the 16th of
November, 1826, being contrary to the conditions under which they
were offered, is invalid.
“2dly, That the sum of fifty guineas each be presented to J.
Dalton, Esq. and James Ivory, Esq. from the funds of the Society;
and that letters be written to each of those gentlemen,
expressing the hope of the Council that this, the only method
which is open to them of honourably fulfilling their pledges,
will be received by those gentlemen as a mark of the high sense
entertained by the Council of the importance and value of their
discoveries, which require not the aid of medals to convey their
reputation to posterity, as amongst the greatest which
distinguished the age in which they lived.”
It may be curious to give the public a specimen of the reasoning
employed in so select a body of philosophers as the Council of
the Royal Society. It was contended, on the one hand, that
although the award was SOMEWHAT IRREGULAR, yet nothing was more
easy than to set it right. As the original rules for giving the
medals were merely an order of the Council,— it would only be
necessary to alter them, and then the award would agree perfectly
with the laws. On the other hand, it was contended, that the
original rules were unknown to the public and to the Society; and
that, in fact, they were only known to the members of the Council
and a few of their friends; and therefore the award was no breach
of faith.
All comment on such reasoning is needless. That such propositions
could not merely be offered, but could pass unreproved, is
sufficient to show that the feelings of that body do not
harmonize with those of the age; and furnishes some explanation
why several of the most active members of the Royal Society have
declined connecting their names with the Council as long as the
present system of management is pursued.
The little interest taken by the body of the Society, either in
its peculiar pursuits, or in the proceedings of the Council, and
the little communication which exists between them, is an evil.
Thus it happens that the deeds of the Council are rarely known to
the body of the Society, and, indeed, scarcely extend beyond that
small portion who frequent the weekly meetings. These pages will
perhaps afford the first notice to the great majority of the
Society of a breach of faith by their Council, which it is
impossible to suppose a body, consisting of more than six hundred
gentlemen, could have sanctioned.
SECTION 8.
OF THE COPLEY MEDALS.
An important distinction exists between scientific
communications, which seems to have escaped the notice of the
Councils of the Royal Society. They may contain discoveries of
new principles,— of laws of nature hitherto unobserved; or they
may consist of a register of observations of known phenomena,
made under new circumstances, or in new and peculiar situations
on the face of our planet. Both these species of additions to
our knowledge are important; but their value and their rarity are
very different in degree. To make and to repeat observations,
even with those trifling alterations, which it is the fashion in
our country (in the present day) to dignify with the name of
discoveries, requires merely inflexible candour in recording
precisely the facts which nature has presented, and a power of
fixing the attention on the instruments employed, or phenomena
examined,—a talent, which can be much improved by proper
Instruction, and which is possessed by most persons of tolerable
abilities and education.* To discover new principles, and to
detect the undiscovered laws by which nature operates, is another
and a higher task, and requires intellectual qualifications of a
very different order: the labour of the one is like that of the
computer of an almanac; the inquiries of the other resemble more
the researches of the accomplished analyst, who has invented the
formula: by which those computations are performed.
[*That the use even of the large astronomical instruments in a
national observatory, does not require any very profound
acquirements, is not an opinion which I should have put forth
without authority. The Astronomer-Royal ought to be the best
judge.
On the minutes of the Council of the Royal Society, for April 6,
1826, with reference to the Assistants necessary for the two
mural circles, we find a letter from Mr. Pond on the subject,
from which the following passage is extracted:
“But to carry on such investigations, I want indefatigable,
hard-working, and above all, obedient drudges (for so I must call
them, although they are drudges of a superior order), men who
will be contented to pass half their day in using their hands and
eyes in the mechanical act of observing, and the remainder of it
in the dull process of calculation.”]
Such being the distinction between the merits of these inquiries,
some difference ought to exist in the nature of any rewards that
may be proposed for their encouragement. The Royal Society have
never marked this difference, and consequently those: honorary
medals which are given to observations, gain a value which is due
to those that are given for discoveries; whilst these latter are
diminished in their estimation by such an association.
I have stated this distinction, because I think it a just one;
but the public would have little cause of complaint if this were
the only ground of objection to the mode of appropriating the
Society’s medals. The first objection to
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