Abstract
THE honorary degree of D.C.L. has been conferred, at the recent Commemoration, by the University of Oxford on the following scientific men:—Sir William George Armstrong, C.B.; Sir James Alderson, M.D., President of the Royal College of Physicians; John P. Gassiot, Vice-President of the Royal Society; Charles W. Siemens, F.R.S.; James Fergusson, F.R.S.; Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth, Bart., the Rev Henry Moseley, M.A., F.R.S., Canon of Bristol; Professor Hermann Helmholtz; George Edward Paget, M.D., President of the General Medical Council; Edward Frankland, F.R.S.; Henry Bence Jones, M.D., F.R.S.; Warren De La Rue, Vice-President of the Royal Society; William Huggins, F.R.S., Secretary to the Royal Astronomical Society. The name of Charles Darwin, F.R.S., would have been included in the foregoing list (as stated in our last number) but he writes that his health is such “that he could not withstand the fatigue and excitement of receiving an honorary degree.” We understand that Prof. Helmholtz has also been prevented from attending. There is a rumour that Science would have been even more brilliantly represented if the degree were the simple thing it is often supposed to be. It really stamps, it seems, a judicious mixture of celebrity and orthodoxy; e.g., either much orthodoxy and a little celebrity, or a little orthodoxy and much celebrity, will qualify, but a dash of orthodoxy is de rigueur. The imprimatur, therefore, is of double value. In the present case, for instance, it is proclaimed to the world that Mr. Darwin, for example, is not only Mr. Darwin, but that Dr. Pusey, and others even more skilled in heresy than he, consider him orthodox. On the whole we should prefer the abolition of tests even here, and one has only to go to Oxford and watch the present scientific activity, the magnificent museums and laboratories which are growing or have grown, to predict that the Oxford of a few years hence will be of the same opinion.
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Notes. Nature 2, 148–150 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/002148a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/002148a0