A History of Science, vol 1 | Page 5

painful stages, he attained those wonderful elements of knowledge that

enabled him to smelt metals and to produce implements of bronze, and
then of iron. Even in the Stone Age he was a mechanic of marvellous
skill, as any one of to-day may satisfy himself by attempting to
duplicate such an implement as a chipped arrow-head. And a barbarian
who could fashion an axe or a knife of bronze had certainly gone far in
his knowledge of scientific principles and their practical application.
The practical application was, doubtless, the only thought that our
primitive ancestor had in mind; quite probably the question as to
principles that might be involved troubled him not at all. Yet, in spite
of himself, he knew certain rudimentary principles of science, even
though he did not formulate them.
Let us inquire what some of these principles are. Such an inquiry will,
as it were, clear the ground for our structure of science. It will show the
plane of knowledge on which historical investigation begins.
Incidentally, perhaps, it will reveal to us unsuspected affinities between
ourselves and our remote ancestor. Without attempting anything like a
full analysis, we may note in passing, not merely what primitive man
knew, but what he did not know; that at least a vague notion may be
gained of the field for scientific research that lay open for historic man
to cultivate.
It must be understood that the knowledge of primitive man, as we are
about to outline it, is inferential. We cannot trace the development of
these principles, much less can we say who discovered them. Some of
them, as already suggested, are man's heritage from non-human
ancestors. Others can only have been grasped by him after he had
reached a relatively high stage of human development. But all the
principles here listed must surely have been parts of our primitive
ancestor's knowledge before those earliest days of Egyptian and
Babylonian civilization, the records of which constitute our first
introduction to the so-called historical period. Taken somewhat in the
order of their probable discovery, the scientific ideas of primitive man
may be roughly listed as follows:
1. Primitive man must have conceived that the earth is flat and of
limitless extent. By this it is not meant to imply that he had a distinct

conception of infinity, but, for that matter, it cannot be said that any
one to-day has a conception of infinity that could be called definite. But,
reasoning from experience and the reports of travellers, there was
nothing to suggest to early man the limit of the earth. He did, indeed,
find in his wanderings, that changed climatic conditions barred him
from farther progress; but beyond the farthest reaches of his migrations,
the seemingly flat land-surfaces and water-surfaces stretched away
unbroken and, to all appearances, without end. It would require a reach
of the philosophical imagination to conceive a limit to the earth, and
while such imaginings may have been current in the prehistoric period,
we can have no proof of them, and we may well postpone consideration
of man's early dreamings as to the shape of the earth until we enter the
historical epoch where we stand on firm ground.
2. Primitive man must, from a very early period, have observed that the
sun gives heat and light, and that the moon and stars seem to give light
only and no heat. It required but a slight extension of this observation
to note that the changing phases of the seasons were associated with the
seeming approach and recession of the sun. This observation, however,
could not have been made until man had migrated from the tropical
regions, and had reached a stage of mechanical development enabling
him to live in subtropical or temperate zones. Even then it is
conceivable that a long period must have elapsed before a direct causal
relation was felt to exist between the shifting of the sun and the shifting
of the seasons; because, as every one knows, the periods of greatest
heat in summer and greatest cold in winter usually come some weeks
after the time of the solstices. Yet, the fact that these extremes of
temperature are associated in some way with the change of the sun's
place in the heavens must, in time, have impressed itself upon even a
rudimentary intelligence. It is hardly necessary to add that this is not
meant to imply any definite knowledge of the real meaning of, the
seeming oscillations of the sun. We shall see that, even at a relatively
late period, the vaguest notions were still in vogue as to the cause of the
sun's changes of position.
That the sun, moon, and stars move across the heavens must obviously
have been among the earliest scientific observations. It must not be

inferred, however, that this