Decline of Science in England by Charles Babbage (ebook reader with android os .TXT) 📕

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