Reflections on the Decline of Science in England

Of minute precision.

No person will deny that the highest degree of attainable accuracy is an object to be desired, and it is generally found that the last advances towards precision require a greater devotion of time, labour, and expense, than those which precede them.  The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.

The extreme accuracy required in some of our modern inquiries has, in some respects, had an unfortunate influence, by favouring the opinion, that no experiments are valuable, unless the measures are most minute, and the accordance amongst them most perfect.  It may, perhaps, be of some use to show, that even with large instruments, and most practised observers, this is but rarely the case.  The following extract is taken from a representation made by the present Astronomer-Royal, to the Council of the Royal Society, on the advantages to be derived from the employment of two mural circles:—­

“That by observing, with two instruments, the same objects at the same time, and in the same manner, we should be able to estimate how much of that occasional discordance from the mean, which attends even the most careful observations, ought to be attributed to irregularity of refraction, and how much to the IMPERFECTIONS of instruments.”

In confirmation of this may be adduced the opinion of the late M. Delambre, which is the more important, from the statement it contains relative to the necessity of publishing all the observations which have been made.

“Mais quelque soit le parti que l’on prefere, il me semble qu’on doit tout publier.  Ces irregularites memes sont des faits qu’il importe de connoitre.  LES SOINS les PLUS ATTENTIFS N’EN SAUROIENT PRESERVER les OBSERVATEURS les PLUS EXERCES, et celui qui ne produiroit que des angles toujours parfaitment d’accord auroit ete singulierement bien servi par les circonstances ou ne seroit pas bien sincere.”—­Base du Systeme Metrique, Discours Preliminaire, p. 158.

This desire for 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 portions of matter beyond the ken of the rest of his species, confers an obligation on them, by recording what he sees; but their knowledge depends both on his testimony and on his judgment.  He who contrives a method of rendering such atoms visible to ordinary observers, communicates to mankind an instrument of discovery, and stamps his own observations with a character, alike independent of testimony or of judgment.