A History of Science, vol 1 by Henry Smith Williams (red white and royal blue hardcover .TXT) 📕

That the sun, moon, and stars move across the heavens must obviously have been among the earliest scientific observations.

It must not be inferred, however, that this observation implied a necessary conception of the complete revolution of these bodies about the earth. It is unnecessary to speculate here as to how the primitive intelligence conceived the transfer of the sun from the western to the eastern horizon, to be effected each night, for we shall have occasion to examine some historical speculations regarding this phenomenon. We may assume, however, that the idea of the transfer of the heavenly bodies beneath the earth (whatever the conception as to the form of that body) must early have presented itself.

It required a relatively high development of the observing faculties, yet a development which man must have attained ages before the historical period, to note that the moon has a secondary motion, which leads it to shift its relative position in the heavens, as regards the stars; that the stars themselves, on the other hand, keep a fixed relation as regards one another, with the notable exception of two or three of the most brilliant members of the galaxy, the latter being the bodies which came to be known finally as planets, or wandering stars. The wandering propensities of such brilliant bodies as Jupiter and Venus cannot well have escaped detection. We may safely assume, however, that these anomalous motions of the moon and planets found no explanation that could be called scientific until a relatively late period.

3. Turning from the heavens to the earth, and ignoring such primitive observations as that of the distinction between land and water, we may note that there was one great scientific law which must have forced itself upon the attention of primitive man. This is the law of universal terrestrial gravitation. The word gravitation suggests the name of Newton, and it may excite surprise to hear a knowledge of gravitation ascribed to men who preceded that philosopher by, say, twenty-five or fifty thousand years. Yet the slightest consideration of the facts will make it clear that the great central law that all heavy bodies fall directly towards the earth, cannot have escaped the attention of the most primitive intelligence. The arboreal habits of our primitive ancestors gave opportunities for constant observation of the practicalities of this law. And, so soon as man had developed the mental capacity to formulate ideas, one of the earliest ideas must have been the conception, however vaguely phrased in words, that all unsupported bodies fall towards the earth. The same phenomenon being observed to operate on water-surfaces, and no alteration being observed in its operation in different portions of man’s habitat, the most primitive wanderer must have come to have full faith in the universal action of the observed law of gravitation. Indeed, it is inconceivable that he can have imagined a place on the earth where this law does not operate. On the other hand, of course, he never grasped the conception of the operation of this law beyond the close proximity of the earth. To extend the reach of gravitation out to the moon and to the stars, including within its compass every particle of matter in the universe, was the work of Newton, as we shall see in due course. Meantime we shall better understand that work if we recall that the mere local fact of terrestrial gravitation has been the familiar knowledge of all generations of men. It may further help to connect us in sympathy with our primeval ancestor if we recall that in the attempt to explain this fact of terrestrial gravitation Newton made no advance, and we of to-day are scarcely more enlightened than the man of the Stone Age. Like the man of the Stone Age, we know that an arrow shot into the sky falls back to the earth. We can calculate, as he could not do, the arc it will describe and the exact speed of its fall; but as to why it returns to earth at all, the greatest philosopher of to-day is almost as much in the dark as was the first primitive bowman that ever made the experiment.

Other physical facts going to make up an elementary science of mechanics, that were demonstratively known to prehistoric man, were such as these: the rigidity of solids and the mobility of liquids; the fact that changes of temperature transform solids to liquids and vice versa—that heat, for example, melts copper and even iron, and that cold congeals water; and the fact that friction, as illustrated in the rubbing together of two sticks, may produce heat enough to cause a fire. The rationale of this last experiment did not receive an explanation until about the beginning of the nineteenth century of our own era. But the experimental fact was so well known to prehistoric man that he employed this method, as various savage tribes employ it to this day, for the altogether practical purpose of making a fire; just as he employed his practical knowledge of the mutability of solids and liquids in smelting ores, in alloying copper with tin to make bronze, and in casting this alloy in molds to make various implements and weapons. Here, then, were the germs of an elementary science of physics. Meanwhile such observations as that of the solution of salt in water may be considered as giving a first lesson in chemistry, but beyond such altogether rudimentary conceptions chemical knowledge could not have gone—unless, indeed, the practical observation of the effects of fire be included; nor can this well be overlooked, since scarcely another single line of practical observation had a more direct influence in promoting the progress of man towards the heights of civilization.

4. In the field of what we now speak of as biological knowledge, primitive man had obviously the widest opportunity for practical observation. We can hardly doubt that man attained, at an early day, to that conception of identity and of difference which Plato places at the head of his metaphysical system. We shall urge presently that it is precisely such general ideas as these that were man’s earliest inductions from observation, and hence that came to seem the most universal and “innate” ideas of his mentality. It is quite inconceivable, for example, that even the most rudimentary intelligence that could be called human could fail to discriminate between living things and, let us say, the rocks of the earth. The most primitive intelligence, then, must have made a tacit classification of the natural objects about it into the grand divisions of animate and inanimate nature.

Doubtless the nascent scientist may have imagined life animating many bodies that we should call inanimate—such as the sun, wandering planets, the winds, and lightning; and, on the other hand, he may quite likely have relegated such objects as trees to the ranks of the non-living; but that he recognized a fundamental distinction between, let us say, a wolf and a granite bowlder we cannot well doubt. A step beyond this—a step, however, that may have required centuries or millenniums in the taking—must have carried man to a plane of intelligence from which a primitive Aristotle or Linnaeus was enabled to note differences and resemblances connoting such groups of things as fishes, birds, and furry beasts. This conception, to be sure, is an abstraction of a relatively high order. We know that there are savage races to-day whose language contains no word for such an abstraction as bird or tree. We are bound to believe, then, that there were long ages of human progress during which the highest man had attained no such stage of abstraction; but, on the other hand, it is equally little in question that this degree of mental development had been attained long before the opening of our historical period. The primeval man, then, whose scientific knowledge we are attempting to predicate, had become, through his conception of fishes, birds, and hairy animals as separate classes, a scientific zoologist of relatively high attainments.

In the practical field of medical knowledge, a certain stage of development must have been reached at a very early day. Even animals pick and choose among the vegetables about them, and at times seek out certain herbs quite different from their ordinary food, practising a sort of instinctive therapeutics. The cat’s fondness for catnip is a case in point. The most primitive man, then, must have inherited a racial or instinctive knowledge of the medicinal effects of certain herbs; in particular he must have had such elementary knowledge of toxicology as would enable him to avoid eating certain poisonous berries. Perhaps, indeed, we are placing the effect before the cause to some extent; for, after all, the animal system possesses marvellous powers of adaption, and there is perhaps hardly any poisonous vegetable which man might not have learned to eat without deleterious effect, provided the experiment were made gradually. To a certain extent, then, the observed poisonous effects of numerous plants upon the human system are to be explained by the fact that our ancestors have avoided this particular vegetable. Certain fruits and berries might have come to have been a part of man’s diet, had they grown in the regions he inhabited at an early day, which now are poisonous to his system. This thought, however, carries us too far afield. For practical purposes, it suffices that certain roots, leaves, and fruits possess principles that are poisonous to the human system, and that unless man had learned in some way to avoid these, our race must have come to disaster. In point of fact, he did learn to avoid them; and such evidence implied, as has been said, an elementary knowledge of toxicology.

Coupled with this knowledge of things dangerous to the human system, there must have grown up, at a very early day, a belief in the remedial character of various vegetables as agents to combat disease. Here, of course, was a rudimentary therapeutics, a crude principle of an empirical art of medicine. As just suggested, the lower order of animals have an instinctive knowledge that enables them to seek out remedial herbs (though we probably exaggerate the extent of this instinctive knowledge); and if this be true, man must have inherited from his prehuman ancestors this instinct along with the others. That he extended this knowledge through observation and practice, and came early to make extensive use of drugs in the treatment of disease, is placed beyond cavil through the observation of the various existing barbaric tribes, nearly all of whom practice elaborate systems of therapeutics. We shall have occasion to see that even within historic times the particular therapeutic measures employed were often crude, and, as we are accustomed to say, unscientific; but even the crudest of them are really based upon scientific principles, inasmuch as their application implies the deduction of principles of action from previous observations.

Certain drugs are applied to appease certain symptoms of disease because in the belief of the medicine-man such drugs have proved beneficial in previous similar cases.

All this, however, implies an appreciation of the fact that man is subject to “natural” diseases, and that if these diseases are not combated, death may result. But it should be understood that the earliest man probably had no such conception as this.

Throughout all the ages of early development, what we call “natural” disease and “natural” death meant the onslaught of a tangible enemy. A study of this question leads us to some very curious inferences. The more we look into the matter the more the thought forces itself home to us that the idea of natural death, as we now conceive it, came to primitive man as a relatively late scientific induction. This thought seems almost startling, so axiomatic has the conception “man is mortal” come