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CHAPTER V A Deluge of Facts The chief source of difficulty that Baconian science faced in the early years of the nineteenth century was, paradoxically enough, spectacular success in the area of its competence, the collection of facts. Early fact gathering, being largely random and undirected, had resulted in an overwhelming mass of undigested data that ultimately became a source of embarrassment and confusion.1 In one science after another, the older systems of data management had proved to be either unworkable or misleading, and they had not as yet been replaced with better systems or theoretical constructs. The new classification systems of the century, as observed in an earlier chapter, served the function of creating an esoteric body of knowledge and thereby providing a need for a body of experts to cultivate the knowledge. But quite apart from any professional considerations, the chaotic state of the sciences in the first half of the century demanded that some revisions be made; and the ever increasing amount of natural history knowledge that was accumulated made that necessity even more urgent. Since Baconian philosophy had been identified with classification, it was only natural that many thinkers would tum to a search for a better system of classification as the surest way out of their difficulties. Despite its demonstrable value, there were many dangers inherent in too great an emphasis on classification and nomenclature. John D. Godman, American physiologist, naturalist, and scientific journalist, was particularly disturbed about one of the most obvious of these dangers. "Beginners of the study of natural history are generally liable to form erroneous conclusions," he cautioned, "among which none is more common and prejudicial than that of mistaking the system of classification for the subjects classed, or in other worns, A DELUGE OF FACTS 103 the arrangement of the names for the things themselves; nomenclature for natural history." 2 Godman's recognition that there was more to science than classification -that to name a thing and place it in a structured system was not the same as to know the thing in a scientific sense-was not unique, but it did place him out of the mainstream of American scientific thought of the period. Most scientists tended to think that when a piece of data was finally located in its place in the truly "natural system" they would have complete scientific knowledge of that data. Bacon himself had placed great emphaSis upon arranging data systematically in tables, and later Baconians were even more enthusiastic about the possibilities of such an arrangement than the master had been. Elias Loomis and other American investigators had demonstrated the impressive possibilities in systematic tabular arrangement, and their fellow scientists, sharing the optimistic outlook of the period, were far more likely to learn from their successes than from their failures. The enthusiasm was such, in fact, that one American writer was moved to attempt a natural classification of all human knowledge, including in his 581 pages, as he put it, an "exhaustive analysis" in which even the minor fragments of knowledge would find their place.3 Certainly Bacon had been correct in his emphaSiS upon the need for accurate classification, and since the end of the eighteenth century there had been a great many more reasons for systematic arrangement than there had been in Bacon's time. In his classic paper on combustion, Lavoisier had stated the need very well: Dangerous though the spirit of systems is in physical science, it is equally to be feared lest piling up without any order too great a store of experiments may obscure instead of illuminating the science: lest one thereby make access difficult to those who present themselves at the threshold; lest, in a word, there be obtained as the reward of long and painful efforts nothing but disorder and confusion. Facts, observations, experiments , are the materials of a great edifice. But in assembling them, we must not encumber our science. We must, on the contrary, devote ourselves to classifying them, to distinguishing which belong to each other, to each part of the whole to which they pertain. The French chemist was aware of the dangers inherent in unsystematic collection of data. His new chemical nomenclature was designed to provide a ready way to classify all the materials of chemistry and assign them a place in the system. Furthennore, it 104 A DELUGE OF FACTS contained a built-in device for detennining what to do with new substances as soon as they were discovered; for...

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