120 THE SCIENTIFIC PLAN OF THE CONGRESS 



abstractions where we have now to examine the most minute details. 

 In short, the shifting of the centre of gravity creates perfectly new 

 sciences which must be distinguished; and if we call them again theo- 

 retical and practical sciences, it is clear that this difference has then 

 no longer anything to do with the philosophical problems from which 

 we started. 



The term practical may be preferable to the other term which is 

 sometimes used : Applied Science. If we construct the antithesis of 

 theoretical and applied science, the underlying idea is clearly that we 

 have to do on the practical side with a discipline which teaches how 

 to apply a science which logically exists as such beforehand. Engin- 

 eering, for instance, is an applied science because it applies the 

 science of physics; but this is not really our deepest meaning here. 

 Our practical sciences are not meant as mere applications of theo- 

 retical sciences. They are logically somewhat degraded if they are 

 treated in such a way. Their real logical meaning comes out only if 

 they are acknowledged as self-dependent sciences whose material is 

 differentiated from that of the theoretical sciences by the different 

 point of view and purpose. They are methodologically perfectly inde- 

 pendent, and the fact that a large part or theoretically even every- 

 thing of their teaching overlaps the teaching of certain theoretical 

 sciences ought not to have any influence on their logical standing. 

 The practical sciences could be conceived as completely self-depend- 

 ent, without the existence of any so-called theoretical sciences; 

 that is, the relations of the world of experience to our individual 

 aims might be brought into complete systems without working out in 

 principle the system of independent experience. We might have a 

 science of engineering without acknowledging an independent science 

 of theoretical physics besides it. To be sure, such a science of engin- 

 eering would finally develop itself into a system which would con- 

 tain very much that might just as well be called theoretical physics; 

 yet all would be held together by the point of view of the engineer, 

 and that part of theoretical physics which the engineer applies might 

 just as well be considered as depracticalized engineering. If this 

 logical self-dependence of the practical science holds true even for 

 such technological disciplines, it is still more evident that it would 

 cripple the meaning and independent character of jurisprudence and 

 social science, or of pedagogy and theology, to treat them simply as 

 applied sciences, that is, as applications of theoretical science. 



This point of view determines, also, of course, the classification of 

 the Practical Sciences. If they were really merely applied sciences 

 it would be most natural to group them according to the classification 

 of the theoretical sciences which are to be applied. We should then 

 have applied physical sciences, applied psychological sciences, applied 

 historical sciences, and applied normative sciences. Yet even from the 



