Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes |
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Popular passages
Page 38 - ... amongst so many competitors, in spite of his great talents, he can be but moderately successful. The loss to him is great, but to the country it is greater. We thus, by a destructive misapplication of talent which our institutions create, exchange a profound philosopher for but a tolerable lawyer. If, on the other hand, he possess some moderate fortune of his own ; and, intent on the glory of an immortal name, yet not blindly ignorant of the state of science in this country, he resolve to make...
Page 20 - Pisa, during the last months, made me a present, at parting, of more than a thousand florins, and has now invited me to attach myself to him, with the annual salary of one thousand florins, and with the title of ' Philosopher and Principal Mathematician to His Highness ;' without the duties of any office to perform, but with the most complete leisure.
Page 186 - Society is much sought after by medical men, as contributing to the success of tb«ir professional efforts, and two consequences result from it: In the first place, the pages of the Transactions of the Royal Society occasionally contain medical papers of very moderate merit : and, in the second, the preponderance of the medical interest introduces into the Society some of the jealousies of that profession. On the other hand, medicine is intimately connected with many sciences, and its professors...
Page 113 - Society, in such a manner as should, by the excitement of competition among men of science, seem best calculated to promote the objects for which the Royal Society was originally instituted.
Page 177 - He has more sense or less adventure than the Cook. Of Cooking. This is an art of various forms, the object of which is to give to ordinary observations the appearance and character of those of the highest degree of accuracy. One of its numerous processes is to make multitudes of observations, and out of these to select those only which agree, or very nearly agree. If a hundred observations are made, the cook must be very unlucky if he cannot pick out fifteen or twenty which will do for serving up....
Page 26 - Probabilites, were both dedicated, by Laplace, to Napoleon. During the reign of that extraordinary man, the triumphs of France were as eminent in science as they were splendid in arms. May the institutions which trained and rewarded her philosophers be permanent as the benefits they have conferred upon mankind ! In other countries it has been found, and is admitted, that a knowledge of science is a recommendation to public appointments, and that a man does not make a worse ambassador because he has...
Page 167 - ... extreme accuracy has called away the attention of experimenters from points of far greater importance, and it seems to have been too much overlooked in the present day, that genius marks its tract, not by the observation of quantities inappreciable to any but the acutest senses, but by placing Nature in such circumstances, that she is forced to record her minutest variations on so magnified a scale, that an observer, possessing ordinary faculties, shall find them legibly written. He who can see...
Page 36 - There are no situations in the state ; there is no position in society to which hope can point, to cheer him in his laborious path. If, indeed, he belong to one of our universities, there are some few chairs in his own Alma Mater to which he may at some distant...
Page 113 - In the year 1825, George IV. communicated through Sir Robert Peel his intention "to found two gold medals of the value of fifty guineas each, to be awarded as honorary premiums under the direction of the president and council of the Royal Society in such manner as shall by the excitement of competition among men of science seem best calculated to promote the objects for which the Royal Society was instituted.
Page 53 - To resolve that he was a FIT person might have been sufficiently flattering: to state that he was the most fit, was a little hard upon the rest of the Society; but to resolve that he was "BY FAR THE MOST FIT" was only consistent with that strain of compliment in which his supporters indulge, and was a eulogy, by no means unique in its kind, I believe, even at that very Council. That Mr. Gilbert is a most amiable and kind-hearted man will be instantly admitted by all who are, in the least...