Abstract
IT is often said that Science is a thing of slow growth, and it must indeed be confessed that if one turns aside from the advancement of Science as a whole to the advance of any one particular branch of it, the statement is too true. Over and over again one gets instances in which crucial experiments suggested by previous work are separated by decades or even by centuries. One cause to which this slow march is undoubtedly to be attributed is the apathy of men of Science themselves. To any science in which they do not themselves excel, and especially to any newly-opened-up branch of their own technic, the attitude of many men, and especially of official men, of Science, is not merely one of passive resistance; it is the attitude of the Schoolmen in the time of Galileo over again. We grant that these cramped minds are fortunately in a minority, but the minority is often a powerful one, for the reason, among others, that it is composed of men as a rule advanced in years, far removed therefore from the sympathies, unselfishness, receptivity, and unbounded horizon of youth.
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The African Eclipse of 1874. Nature 10, 59–60 (1874). https://doi.org/10.1038/010059a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/010059a0