Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial NavigationMoore, Bloomfield H., Mrs.
Religion
Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial Navigation
Moore, Bloomfield H., Mrs.
Keely motor; Keely, John Ernest Worrell, 1827-1898
Unlike Keely, Edison through all his years of experimental research has
never once made a discovery. All the work of this great and successful
inventor has been deductive, and the results achieved by him have been
simply those of pure invention. Like Keely he constructs a theory,
and works on its lines until he finds it untenable; then, he at once
discards it and forms another theory. In connection with the electric
light, he evolved or constructed three thousand successive theories;
each one reasonable and apparently likely to be true; yet, only in
two cases was he able to prove by experiment that his theories were
correct. Of such a nature is the "dead-work" which all researchers
on scientific principles must toil through to attain success.
They must keep their minds open to every suggestion or idea, no matter
how fanciful it may seem to others, and they must never let go their
hold of it until it has been tested in all its possibilities. The same
words which Lathrop uses, in describing Edison's characteristics, are
equally applicable to Keely, who, in addition to his native endowment
of a genius for science and mechanics, brings to bear vast patience
in logical deduction, careful calculation, unlimited experiment, a
ceaseless industry, and a persistence which refuses to be discouraged.
Edison has said that he does not philosophize. Like General Grant,
he is a man of action. When asked what theory he held upon a subject
under discussion, General Grant replied, "I never theorize: when
there is anything to be done, I do it." [12] Edison is always doing
something which the public can see and appreciate, but, unlike Keely,
he has no system to work out and transmute into the pure philosophy
which is now revealing to the world "the further link in the chain
of causation," "the cause of the cause," which hitherto has rather
been assumed than demonstrated.
"If we believe," says Professor Sir G. G. Stokes, "that what are
called the natural sciences spring from the same supreme source
as those which are concerned with morals and Natural Theology in
general, we may expect to find broad lines of analogy between the
two; and thus it may conceivably happen that the investigations,
which belong to natural science, may here and there afford us hints
with respect even to the moral sciences, with which at first sight
they might appear to have no connection. And if such are to be found,
perhaps they are more likely to be indicated by one whose studies
have lain mainly in the direction of those natural sciences than by
one whose primary attention has been devoted to moral subjects."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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