in my opinion, they deserve, from not coming from the pen of an adept.
In the first place, it must require much time to try different formulæ. In the next place it may happen that, in the progress of human knowledge, more correct formulæ may be discovered, and constants may be determined with far greater precision. Or it may be found that some physical circumstance influences the results, (although unsuspected at the time) the measure of which circumstance may perhaps be recovered from other contemporary registers of facts.[1] Or if the selection of observations has been made with the view of its agreeing precisely with the latest determination, there is some little danger that the average of the whole may differ from that of the chosen ones, owing to some law of nature, dependent on the interval between the two sets, which law some future philosopher may discover, and thus the very best observations may have been thrown aside.
In all these, and in numerous other cases, it would most probably happen that the cook would procure a temporary reputation for unrivalled accuracy at the expense of his permanent
- ↑ Imagine, by way of example, the state of the barometer or thermometer.
