Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-31T23:40:19.915Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

I. Notes on the Shape and Structure of some Parts of the Alps, with Reference to Denudation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Extract

It is often said that controversies advance science. I believe, on the contrary, that they retard it—that they are wholly mischievous, and that all good scientific work is done in silence, till done completely. For party in politics, there are some conceivable, though no tenable, reasons; but scientific controversy in its origin must be always either an effort to obscure a discovery not yet distinctly established: and it seems to me there are but two courses for a man of sense respecting disputed statements;—if the matter of them be indeed doubtful, to work at it, and put questions about it, but not argue about it; so the thing will come out in its own time, or, if it stays in, will be no stumbling-block; but if the matter of them be not doubtful, to describe the facts which prove it, and leave them for what they are worth.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1865

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 50 note * Address at Anniversary Meeting of R. Geographical Society, 1864.Google Scholar

page 53 note * ‘Considérations sur le Mont Salève,’ Geneva, 1843, P. 12.Google Scholar