The Art of Scientific Discovery Author:George Gore Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: with ignorance, and a desire to acquire new scientific knowledge are necessary; but they, like all our actions, must be regulated by discretion. It is unwise to ... more »attempt to explain that which is impossible to explain, whether the impossibility arises from the essential nature of the subject, the limited extent of our powers, or the present imperfect state of our knowledge or means. In many cases, however, we are quite unable to determine beforehand whether the knowledge we seek is attainable or not, and in such cases we must act according to our best judgment. CHAPTElt III. UNATTAINED BUT ATTAINABLE TRUTHS OF SCIENCE. ' Nothing can be more puerile than the complaints sometimes made by certain cultivators of a science, that it is very difficult to make discoveries now that the soil has been exhausted, whereas they were so easily made when the ground was first broken. It is an error begotten by ig-norance out of indolence. The first discovery did not drop upon the expectant idler who, with placid equauimity waited for the goods the guds might send, but was heavily obtained by patient, systematic, and intelligent labour; and, beyond all question, the same labour of the same mind which made the first discoveries in the new science, would now succeed in making many more, trampled though the field be by the restless feet of those unmethodical inquirers who, running to and fro, luixiously exclaim. " Who will show us any good thing ? "'1 1 ' Psychological Inquiries,' Journal of Mental Science, 1862, p. 212. The future limits of human knowledge seem to be infinitely distant; the exertion of creative power in developing and improving mankind appears to be infinitely tar from being exhausted. It is highly probable that there remains to be discovered avast number of scientific t...« less