The Scientific Basis of National Progress, Including that of Morality

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Gore George. The Scientific Basis of National Progress, Including that of Morality

PREFACE

CHAPTER I. The Scientific Basis of Material Progress

CHAPTER II. The Scientific Basis of Mental and Moral Progress.12

CHAPTER III. New Truth, and its General Relation to Human Progress

CHAPTER IV. The Promotion of Scientific Research

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During the last one hundred years this nation has advanced with unexampled speed. More wealth has been accumulated by Englishmen since the commencement of the present century, than in all preceding time since the period of Julius Cæsar; one of the causes of this has been the discovery of new truths of science, and their subservience to useful purposes by means of invention. The great manufacturing success of this country has been largely due to those applications of science, which have enabled us to utilise our abundant stores of coal and iron-ore, in steam engines, machinery, and a multitude of mechanical, physical, and chemical processes; also to the discovery of electro-magnetism and its application in the electric-telegraph, etc. And had it not been for these and other adaptations of scientific knowledge, we should have competed in vain with the cheaper labour and longer days of toil of continental nations. Other great causes, such as our insular position, suitable climate, freedom, geographical position, etc., etc. have, however, also contributed to the result. Commerce also in its turn has done vast things for mankind.

The purely scientific knowledge we possess was discovered almost entirely by means of original research, and to only a small extent by persons engaged in industrial occupations. Probably not two per cent. of all the important discoveries in pure science were made in manufactories; the scientific experiments which are made in such establishments are usually of the nature of invention, not of discovery, and are not often published, because it is a usual object with men of business to retain as much as possible of the pecuniary benefit of their labours to themselves. Whilst it is the object of a business man to monopolise special knowledge; that of the scientific man is to diffuse it, in order that all mankind may be benefited and helped to improve.

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On the other hand, science has in various cases rendered obsolete some manufactures and superseded old customs, comforts and conveniences. We have ceased, or almost so, to use tinder-boxes, snuffers, sulphur matches, rush-lights, tallow candles, sedan chairs, stage coaches, the ancient water-bucket and well, and even the comparatively modern pump; coal fires also are gradually being superseded by fires of gas, and articles formed of solid silver are now being replaced by those of electro-plate; canals have also to some extent been supplanted by railways. But in all these cases science has supplied us either with something better or more suited to our present wants.

The great pecuniary benefits arising from the applications of science are generally reaped in the first instance by the great manufacturers, agriculturists, merchants, and capitalists. Countless fortunes have been made by means of processes and manufactures based upon scientific discovery. The pecuniary benefits of calico printing, bleaching, dyeing; of the great manufactures of cotton, iron, pottery, beer, sugar, glass, spirits, vinegar, gutta-percha, india-rubber, gun cotton, the numerous metals, machinery, electro-plate, washing soda, German silver, brass, phosphorus, manures, the common acids, numerous chemicals, and a multitude of other substances and articles, have been extremely great. More than eighteen hundred million pounds of sulphuric acid alone are manufactured in Europe yearly. The pecuniary advantages of the use of the electric telegraph and railways to merchants, the gains of capitalists by monies invested in railways, telegraphs, steam-ships, cotton-mills, gas-works, iron shipbuilding, engineering, and other great applications of science, have been enormous. The annual gas rental of London alone amounts to more than two millions sterling; and even in Birmingham the produce of gas is more than twenty-five hundred millions of cubic feet yearly. The amount of capital expended in the construction of railways only in this country, has been estimated at more than seven hundred millions of pounds, and the total receipts upon British railways has reached forty-three millions per annum. In the year 1875 our railways carried 200 million tons of goods, and consumed ten million tons of coal; the Great Northern Railway alone consumes 5,000 tons of coal each week. In the year 1877 there existed in the entire world about 198,000 miles of railway, the whole having been constructed since the year 1825. In the year 1880 six hundred millions of journeys were made by passengers on British railways; and the stock of those railways included 13,174 locomotives; 369,694 waggons, 28,717 passenger carriages, and 22,712 other vehicles. The London and North-Western Railway Company alone possessed, in the year 1873, no less than 1,900 locomotive engines, each of a value of nearly two thousand pounds; 4,000 carriages and 36,000 waggons; and it has been estimated by competent authorities, that there are in the world 200,000 steam-engines, having a total power of twelve million horses, or 100 million men. The number of cotton spindles on the whole Earth is estimated at about 71¼ millions. In the United States of America there are about five thousand telegraph stations, and 75,000 miles of line, which transmit yearly about 11,500,000 messages. – The telegrams of Great Britain number about one-fourth of a million per week. The world's telegrams during the year 1877 numbered nearly 130 millions; and the world's letters about 3,300 millions, or 9¼ millions each day. Even the little phosphorus match is being manufactured and consumed at a rate estimated at more than ten thousand millions daily.

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