Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LV
MAY TO OCTOBER, 1899
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
Copyright, 1899,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS.APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
JULY, 1899.
SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND ITS APPLICATION TO THE BIBLE.
By the Rev. DAVID SPRAGUE, B. D.
"Trained and organized common sense" is Professor Huxley'sdefinition of science. There is probably no better.
The popular mind persists in thinking that there is a wide differencebetween science and knowledge in general. Yes, there isa wide difference, but it is just the difference that there is betweena trained and organized body of men for the accomplishing of somegreat work, and a crowd of men unorganized and undisciplined.What unscientific knowledge has accomplished may be roughly seenin the condition of savage races to-day; while the changes wroughtby knowledge trained and organized, in enlarging the sum of knowledge,in extending men's power of perception, and in increasing thefacilities not merely for living, but for living well, are changes incomparison with which all others recorded in history are trifling.
It will be profitable for us, in order to get a clearer idea of scientificmethod, to trace as briefly as possible the history of scienceand the development of the scientific idea.
The very beginning of science is beyond our ken. We can formno idea of just what stage in the intellectual development of therace witnessed the rise of training and order in men's knowledge.Long before the dawn of history there must have been some degreeof orderliness in men's knowledge—some grouping of facts, and reasoningfrom one thing to another. Rude classification would bemade, e. g., among animals, as some were found to be good forfood and others not; so among herbs, as to size, form, color, usefor food and medicine, poisonous qualities, etc.; so among woods, as[Pg 290]some were better adapted than others to use as instruments of warand of the chase. Men must also, very early in their development,have noticed the changes that took place in the heavens: the sunby day, the moon and the stars by night; have grouped the starsinto little clusters here and there as they seemed rudely to resembleforms of things which they knew, and as some were brighter thanthe rest; have begun to reckon periods of time according as positionof sun and moon varied. In their observation of the heavens noother phenomenon would have attracted as much attention as aneclipse, and for a long time men would have ascribed this occasionalphenomenon to the intervention of some supernatural power. Inprocess of time, however, as their observations were made with morecare and recorded, some regularity would be noticed in these, as inother phenomena of the skies; and the period of their recurrencebeing at last approximately known by those more learned than therest, predictions of eclipses would be made and verified by what wouldse