96 THE SCIENTIFIC PLAN OF THE CONGRESS 



science was the loser when it trusted its problems to the metaphy- 

 sical thinker who substituted his lofty speculations for the hard 

 work of the investigator. The true scholar will thus not only object 

 to generalizing " commonplaces" as against solid information, but he 

 will object as well to logical demarcation lines and systematization 

 as against the practical scientific work which does not want to be 

 hampered by such philosophical subtleties. Yet all these fears and 

 suspicions were still more mistaken. 



Nothing was further from our intentions than a substitution of 

 metaphysics for concrete science. It was not by chance that we took 

 such pains to find the best specialists for every section. No one was 

 invited to enter into logical discussions and to consider the relations 

 of science merely from a dialectic point of view. The topic was every- 

 where the whole living manifoldness of actual relations, and the logi- 

 cian had nothing else to do than to prepare the programme. The 

 outlines of the programme demanded, of course, a certain logical 

 scheme. If hundreds of sciences are to take part, they have to be 

 grouped somehow, if a merely alphabetical order is not adopted; and 

 even if we were to proceed alphabetically, we should have to decide 

 beforehand what part of knowledge is to be recognized as a special 

 science. But the logical order of the ground-plan refers, of course, 

 merely to the simple relation of coordination, subordination, and 

 superordination, and the logician is satisfied with such a classification. 

 But the endless variety of internal relations is no longer to be dealt 

 with from the point of view of mere logic. We may work out the 

 ground-plan in such a way that we understand that logically zoology 

 is coordinated to botany and subordinated to mechanics and super- 

 ordinated to ichthyology; but this minimum of determination gives, 

 of course, not even a hint of that world of relations which exists from 

 the standpoint of the biologist between the science of zoology and 

 the science of botany, or between the biological and the mechanical 

 studies. To discuss these relations of real scientific life is the work of 

 the biologist and not at all of the logician. 



The foregoing answers also at once an objection which might seem 

 more justified at the first glance. It has been said that we were under- 

 taking the work of bringing about a synthesis of scientific endeavors, 

 and that we yet had that synthesis already completed in the pro- 

 gramme on which the work was to be based. The scholars to be in- 

 vited would be bound by the programme, and would therefore have 

 no other possibility than to say with more words what the programme 

 had settled beforehand. The whole effort would then seem determined 

 from the start by the arbitrariness of the proposed ground-plan. 

 Now it cannot be denied indeed that a certain factor of arbitrariness 

 has to enter into a programme. We have already referred to the fact 

 that some one must decide beforehand what fraction of science is to be 



