The Advancement of Natural Knowledge

Abstract

THE London Gazette announces that a petition for incorporation has been presented to His Majesty on behalf of a new body, “The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies.” An explanation has been given that the object of this institution is to do for the various departments of “literary science” what the Royal Society has achieved for “natural science.” The causes which have led up to this proposal may be stated as follows. At a meeting of the representatives of the chief European and American academies held at Wiesbaden in October 1899, an International Association of the principal Scientific and Literary Academies of the world was decided upon. Most of the academies represented are divided into two sections, a section of natural science and a section of historico-philosophical science. And on this ground the scheme provided for the division of the new association into two sections, “scientific’ and “literary,” the word “literary” being used only as a short title to embrace the sciences of language, history, philosophy, archæology and other subjects the proper study of which is based on scientific methods. At the conference the representatives of the Royal Society, not feeling themselves competent to represent the United Kingdom in the philosophico-historical section, were unofficially requested to take such steps as might be possible to fill this gap in the future.