The Old Humanities and the New ScienceOsler, William, Sir
Philosophy
The Old Humanities and the New Science
Osler, William, Sir
Classical education; Science
To have lived right through an epoch, matched only by two in the story
of the race, to have shared in its long struggle, to have witnessed its
final victory (and in my own case, to be left I trust with wit enough to
realize its significance)--to have done this has been a wonderful
privilege. To have outgrown age-old theories of man and of nature, to
have seen west separated from east in the tangled skein of human
thought, to have lived in a world re-making--these are among the thrills
and triumphs of the Victorian of my generation. To a childhood and youth
came echoes of the controversy that Aristarchus began, Copernicus
continued, and Darwin ended, that put the microcosm into line with the
macrocosm, and for the golden age of Eden substituted the _tellus dura_
of Lucretius. Think of the Cimmerian darkness out of which our
generation has, at any rate, blazed a path! Picture the mental state of
a community which could produce "Omphalos: An Attempt to untie the
Geological Knot"![1] I heard warm clerical discussions on its main
thesis, that the fossils were put into the earth's strata to test men's
faith in the Mosaic account of the creation, and our Professor of
Natural Theology lectured seriously upon it! The intellectual unrest of
those days wrapped many in that "dyvine cloude of unknowynge," by which
happy phrase Brother Herp designates mediæval mysticism; and not a bad
thing for a young man to live through, as sufficient infection usually
remains to enable him to understand, if not to sympathize with, mental
states alien or even hostile.
[1] By the distinguished naturalist Philip Henry Gosse.
An Age of Force followed the final subjugation of Nature. The dynamo
replaced the steam-engine, radiant energy revealed the hidden secrets of
matter, to the conquest of the earth was added the control of the air
and the mastery of the deep. Nor was it only an Age of Force. Never
before had man done so much for his brother, the victory over the powers
of Nature meant also glorious victories of peace; pestilences were
checked, the cry of the poor became articulate, and to help the life of
the submerged half became a sacred duty of the other. How full we were
of the pride of life! In 1910 at Edinburgh I ended an address on "Man's
Redemption of Man" with the well-known lines of Shelley beginning,
"Happiness and Science dawn though late upon the earth." And now, having
survived the greatest war in history, and a great victory, with the
wreckage of mediæval autonomy to clear up, our fears are lest we may
fail to control the fretful forces of Caliban, and our hopes are to
rebuild Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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