324 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



77. RATIONAL SCIENCE 



Though a theory of epistemology is not the theme of 

 these lectures, yet the connexion of constituents of nature, 

 based upon categories, with immediate Givenness, requires a 

 few words of explanation. 



Rational Science and " Ideal Nature " 



All science that goes beyond mere description and 

 empirical classification deserves the predicate " rational," for 

 it is " science " only so far as it is based upon the character- 

 istics of reason. These characteristics of reason are the 

 faculty of forming categorical statements that may be concepts 

 or propositions, and the faculty of concluding from premises. 

 The raw material of science, of course, is immediate per- 

 ceptible Givenness in space and in time. This raw material 

 is transformed by " science " into the concept of ideal nature 

 in so far as categorical statements, say ontological proto- 

 types, are connected with mere spatio-temporal inductive 

 generalisations. Whether this connexion is possible at all 

 and within what limits that is a problem of a special kind, 

 which we shall briefly discuss later on. 



Rational Science and " Causal " Science 



It is very far from the truth to regard rational and causal 

 science as one and the same. But rational and causal science 

 are in fact very often confused, 'and it seems to me that this 

 logical error is due to the ambiguous word explaining. 



In its legitimate use this word denotes the relation of 

 the creneral to the singular. A single event in Givenness, 



