RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 71 



The other sciences are in a certain sense secondary to the three 

 that have been mentioned. Each is concerned with the investigation 

 of some system that is built up out of matter, and involves the same 

 fundamental relations which are the objects of study for the primary 

 sciences, but the secondary science finds its interest not in the ma- 

 terials of which the structure is made, but in the study of the result- 

 ing structure itself. 



Thus astronomy seeks to describe and make out the past history 

 and future development of the universe of sun and star and planet. 

 The sciences of the earth are concerned with the history of the devel- 

 opment of our planet, with the present phenomena of its interior, 

 of its crust, of its surface, and of its atmosphere, while the secondary 

 biological sciences have as their aim to trace the relations of the 

 various forms of life and to follow out the developments of each. 



But while each secondary science thus has an aim of its own quite 

 distinct from that of the primary sciences, nevertheless it must be 

 controlled and to some extent guided by the sciences of matter. 

 Thus in almost every science chemical phenomena play a part 

 which must be reckoned with, while physics, dealing as it does with 

 the most universal phenomena of matter, underlies and conditions 

 all the sciences without exception. Therefore it is to be expected 

 that with the development of physics both in discovery and theory 

 there should be a greater or less reaction on the other sciences, for 

 in so far as they depend for their development on the laws of matter 

 they are dependent on the labors of the physicist. 



We might therefore expect to find in every science, if we only knew 

 it well enough, a response to every considerable advance in physics. 

 For the advances in a science result not from discovery alone, but 

 from new points of view taken by those who are thinking on its 

 problems; and the ideas of physics, bearing as they may be said to 

 do on the raw material of the other sciences, must in a preeminent 

 degree influence the thinking of workers in all fields. 



It deserves to be emphasized that every science is an intellectual 

 structure. Only as this is conceded will science be yielded the lofty 

 and dignified position which is its due. Experiments may be multi- 

 plied, facts and data may be accumulated in bewildering numbers, 

 but there is no science without the clear intellectual vision that sees 

 the parts in their dependencies and relations one to another and 

 catches glimpses of the larger unities that run through all. 



They are mistaken who think the true scientist less an idealist 

 than is the artist or student of literature, or who think the path of 

 experiment mere drudgery in the accumulation of insignificant facts. 

 The investigator lives in a world of ideas, and in every step of a dif- 

 ficult inquiry he has the buoyant consciousness that he is getting 

 a deeper, truer insight into his science. 



