354 Lightman
declared, the notion that modern experiments consist principally of mea-
surements was so prevalent that scientists abroad were of the opinion
that “in a few years all the great physical constants will have been ap-
proximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will then be
left to men of science will be to carry on these measurements to another
place of decimals.”^50
As if to assure his audience that the combination of experiment and
mathematical analysis would not lead Cambridge science students away
from Anglicanism, Maxwell asked, “But what will be the effect on the
University, if men pursuing that course of reading which has produced so
many distinguished Wranglers, turn aside to work experiments?”^51 After
discussing the need to adopt statistical methods for dealing with groups
of atoms, Maxwell answered the question by pointing to the picture of
molecules yielded by the approach to physics that he was proposing. It
had been discovered that the mass of any present molecule was absolutely
invariable and that it was identical to molecules throughout the universe
throughout time. How could the scientist account for this identity in
the properties of such a multitude of bodies? Maxwell concluded that
he was “forced to believe that these molecules must have been made as
they are from the beginning of their existence.” The manufactured qual-
ity of molecules pointed not only to a maker, but a supernatural maker.
“I also conclude,” Maxwell proclaimed, “that since none of the processes
of nature, during their varied action on different individual molecules,
have produced, in the course of ages, the slightest difference between the
properties of one molecule and those of another, the history of whose
combinations has been different, we cannot ascribe either their existence
or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of those causes
which we call natural.”^52 An experimental approach to natural philosophy
led directly to the acknowledgement of the existence of a supernatural
cause. While Huxley trained his biology students at South Kensington to
see a fully secularized material world through the lens of the microscope,
Maxwell and the other North British Physicists were prepared to admit
God into their laboratory as the creator who had given purpose to nature
and to all scientifi c activity.THE POPULARIZERS OF SCIENCE
The vision of science laid out by Huxley and his allies was also resisted
by popularizers of science, who managed to build an entire career out of
their science journalism, and by members of the vast Victorian reading