Scientifi c Methods 319between the scientifi c and popular. An 1878 review of a work on birds
complimented the author for “avoiding the technicalities of the ordinary
scientifi c method” and thus exhibiting “the study of ornithology in its
more agreeable and fascinating aspect.” Numerous reviews of books on
scientifi c subjects meant for wide audiences—all a part of the emerging
genre of popular science—echoed such sentiments, praising the “art of
combining a ‘scientifi c method’ with an animated exposition,” so that
such works were “neither too abstract nor too popular.”^43 The potentially
rather dull and strict requirements of scientifi c methodology also some-
times heightened distinctions between science and art. In 1872, actor and
playwright James MacKaye tried to apply scientifi c method to a stage per-
formance. His experiment was not entirely successful and one observer
noted that “science had destroyed the artist. Rule and method underlie
the efforts of every accomplished actor; but the moment they become ap-
parent, the passion loses every touch and quality of genuineness.”^44
Scientifi c method thus did help lend science a more substantial and
independent existence, but in practice offered little more fl exibility than
the increasingly narrow inductive rhetoric. A relative lack of fl exibility, in
turn, discouraged any signifi cant spread or formalization through repeti-
tion. Prominent advocates of a powerful science, such as William James
and Thomas Henry Huxley, both rejected the value of Baconian induc-
tion, though in a highly naive form that did little justice to its previous
adaptability. Huxley claimed that anyone familiar with the actual opera-
tion of science was “aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact, rarely
get as far as fact.” James suggested that the Baconian believer might as well
expect “a weather table to sum itself up into a prediction of probabilities,
of its own accord, as to hope that the mere fact of mental confrontation
with a certain series of facts will be suffi cient to make any brain conceive
of their law.”^45 But neither replaced induction with anything called scien-
tifi c method. Ultimately, neither set of methodological boundary- making
tools found much use among those who sought a robustly bounded sci-
ence to keep dabblers and outsiders away while still allowing a powerful
and far- reaching scientifi c enterprise.
Instead, a more active and imaginative view of science often proved
more useful in depicting a science that was capable of wresting from the-
ology, or any other competitor for that matter, “the entire domain of
cosmological theory.” In his address “On the Use of the Scientifi c Imagina-
tion,” John Tyndall argued that despite occasional excesses, society should
be tolerant of the imaginative fl ights of geniuses like Darwin rather than
trying to limit them.^46 The rhetoric of an active, imaginative science ap-
peared increasingly in general discourse too. During the 1880s especially,