356 METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE 



Here we have at once the second force which inspired the ancient 

 methodology. These ideas, like the fundamentally real, constitute 

 that which ultimately alone acts in all the coming into existence 

 and the going out of existence of the manifold things. In the Aris- 

 totelian theory of causation, this thought is made a principle; and 

 we formulate only what is contained in it, when we say that, accord- 

 ing to it, the efficient and at the same time final causes can be 

 deduced through mere analysis from the essential content of the 

 effects; that, in fact, the possible effects of every cause can be de- 

 duced from the content of its definition. The conceptual determina- 

 tion of the causal relation, and with it in principle the sum total of 

 the methods in the material sciences, becomes a logical, analytical, 

 and deductive one. These sciences remain entirely independent of 

 the particular content of experience as this broadens, and so do also 

 the methods under discussion. 



As a consequence, every essential difference between mathemat- 

 ical thought and the science of causes is done away with in favor 

 of a rationalistic construction of the methods of material science. 

 Accordingly, throughout the seventeenth century, the ideal of all 

 scientific method becomes, not the inductive method that founded 

 the new epoch of the science of to-day, but the deductive math- 

 ematical method applied to natural scientific research. The flourish 

 of trumpets with which Francis Bacon hailed the onslaught of the 

 inductive methods in the natural science of the time, helped in no 

 way; for he failed to remodel the traditional, Aristotelian-Scholastic 

 conception of cause, and, accordingly, failed to understand both 

 the problem of induction and the meaning of the inductive methods 

 of the day. 1 Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and related thinkers 

 develop their mathesis universalis after the pattern of geometrical 

 thinking. Leibnitz tries to adapt his specieuse generate to the thought 

 of mathematical analysis. The old methodological conviction gains 

 its clear-cut expression in Spinoza's doctrine: " Aliquid efficitur ab 

 aliqua re" means " aliquid sequitur ex ejus definitione." 



The logically straight path is seldom the one taken in the course 

 of the history of thought. The new formulation and solution of 

 problems influence us first through their evident significance and 

 consequences, not through the traditional presuppositions upon 

 which they are founded. Thus, in the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, when insight into the precise difference between mental 

 and physical events gave rise to pressing need for its definite formu- 

 lation, no question arose concerning the dogmatic presupposition 



be understood as non-being, matter. The things revealed to sense, however, 

 occupy a middle position between being and non-being, so that they partake of 

 the ideas. In this sense, the statement made above holds also of the older view 

 of the concept philosophy. 



1 Cf. the articles on Francis Bacon by Chr. Sigwart in the Preussiscfie Jahr- 

 bitcher, xn, 1863, and xm, 1864. 



